LIFE AND WRITINGS 



THEODORE PARKER. 



Saiiini.del. Rome.L8b9. Vmcent Broaks.lith. 



THEODORE PARKER. 



THE 



LIFE AND WRITINGS 



OF 



EODORE PARK 



ALBERT EEVILLE, D.D. 



(AUTHORISED TRANSLATION, revised by the author.) 



A theologian, from the school 
Of Cambridge on the Charles, was there ; 
Skilful alike with tongue and pen, 
He preach'd to all men everywhere 
The gospel of the golden rule, 
The new commandment given to men, 
Thinking the deed, and not the creed, 
Would help us in our utmost need. 
With reverent feet the earth he trod, 
Nor banish'd nature from his plan, 
But studied still with deep research 
To build the universal church, 
Lofty as is the love of God, 
And ample as the wants of man. 

Longfellow. 



LONDON:^ 
SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, AND CO., 

STATIONERS' HALL COURT. 

1865. 




" Nobody is surprised to find the books of Parker in every thoughtful man's 
library, or to hear multitudes of strong men impute their conversion to him ; 
for he believed in God and man so completely that his fragmentary denials were 
but the floating drift upon the deep, swift current of his mighty faith/ 5 

Rev. A. D. Mayo. 



JOHN CHILDS AND SON, PRINTERS. 



CONTENTS. 

CHAP. PAGE 

I. CHILDHOOD AND EARLY YOUTH ... ... 5 

- II. RELIGIOUS EDUCATION ... ... ... 15 

III. RELIGIOUS CRISIS ... ... ... 33 

IV. VISIT TO EUROPE ... ... ... 50 

V. THE MINISTER OF THE 28TH BOSTON CONGRE- 

GATION ... ... ... ... 61 

VI. AN AMERICAN REFORMER ... 71 

VII. THE QUESTION OF SLAVERY ... ... 91 

VIII. THE KIDNAPPERS ... ... ... 106 

IX. THE LAST DAYS OF A JUST MAN ... ... 123 

X. THIS MAN "WAS A PROPHET ... ... 144 

EXTRACTS FROM PARKER'S WRITINGS. 

I. THE TRANSIENT AND PERMANENT IN CHRISTI- 
ANITY ... ... ... ... 160 

II. RELIGIOUS JOY ... ... ... 173 

III. THE TRUE IDEA OF A CHRISTIAN CHURCH ... 175 

IV. THE AGED ... ... ... ... 182 

V. THE DUTY OF OBEYING THE LAW TOUCHING 

FUGITIVE SLAVES ... ... ... 188 

VI. THE CHIEF SINS OF THE PEOPLE ... ... 190 

VII. A LESSON FOR THE DAY ... ... 194 

VIII. TRUTH IN CONFLICT WITH THE WORLD ... 200 



THEODORE 



PARKER, 



HIS LIFE AND "WOEKS. 



I have always considered it one of the happy circum- 
stances of my life as an author that, thanks to the incom- 
parable organ of public opinion, La Revue des Deux 
Jlondes (Xumber of the 1st Oct., 1S61), I was able to 
draw the attention of the general public to the eminent 
preacher of Boston, in the United States, namely, Theo- 
dore Parker. Doubtless his name was already known in 
several religious circles ; but beyond the limits of Ame- 
rica the knowledge of him was far from. being proportion- 
ate to his merits. Since the publication of that article 
numerous indications, rising in some sort at the four 
corners of the horizon, bear witness to the growing in- 
terest which connects itself with the ideas and the cha- 
racter of that truly admirable man ; one of the superior 
souls of the 19th century, which the sun of the fu- 
ture has lighted up with its early rays. It is, then, with 
all the earnestness which multiplied occupations per- 
mitted me to apply to the task, that I yielded to the de- 
sire expressed by some of his old friends, to the effect 
that I would produce a Memoir of him with more details 
and explanations than the limits of a review-article au- 
thorized in my former labour. Moreover, in composing 

that Essay I had at my disposal only certain newspaper- 

1 



2 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



articles, funereal notices, and communications from friends; 
and since then the sources to be consulted in order to 
trace the attractive history of his life, have greatly in- 
creased. Among others we owe to one of his friends, Mr 
J. Weiss, the inappreciable advantage of acquaintance 
with his voluminous correspondence, at least in all of it 
that is likely to interest the public. # Some incon- 
veniences proceeding from an ill arrangement of the 
numerous letters printed by the author, cannot lessen 
our gratitude for the great service he has rendered. We 
are also obliged to him for having scattered over his nar- 
rative notes taken from the private journal that Parker 
was accustomed to keep, extracts from which, more than 
narrated facts and even than friendly letters, enable us 
to penetrate to the core of his noble heart. 

This study, resumed with new sources of information, 
has led me to rectify my first production on more points 
than one, at least for what concerns the external frame- 
work of the biography. For, as to the picture itself, I 
have only had to persist in the judgment which I at the 
first pronounced touching the American reformer. The 
gigantic events of which his country has been the theatre, 
that colossal crisis which, at the moment when these lines 
are written, is proceeding toward an issue corresponding 
to his hopes after having realized all the fears of his en- 
lightened patriotism, this is the most eloquent comment- 
ary on that life of his suddenly put to an end. I hope 
then that this book will in some measure contribute to a 
movement replete with promises, which carries the human 
race onwards in the way of religious, moral, and social 
progress. I do not believe that our age is, as some de- 
clare, more irreligious, more immoral, and, in general, 
worse, than others. I even think that without much 

* Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker, by J. Weiss. Lon- 
don, 1863. 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



8 



trouble one may prove the contrary. "What is true is 
that, consequent on the spread of general instruction, all 
possible tendencies have now their organs, and accordingly 
make their influence visible, small as it may be. We 
must then not be astonished to see at the two poles of 
the domain of thought, materialism and superstition pre- 
senting their forces with an arrogance scarcely equalled 
in the past, and profiting by all the sources of support, 
which may be offered to them by our generation, in the 
exhaustion and misery which are proper to it. "We ought 
not to close our eyes before their enfeebling action, nor 
be alarmed thereat beyond measure. Bat we ought to set 
in opposition to them the great manifestation of life and 
power of which the apostle speaks, and in particular to 
save the age from forgetting those of its children who 
have lived on these three sacred and mutual loves, viz., 
God, man, liberty. 



1 * 



THE TEANSLATOE TO THE EEADEE. 



Did agreement of opinion stand supreme in my esti- 
mate, I should not have translated this interesting and 
instructive volume, but placing, as I do, the essence of 
religion in the love of God and man as embodied in Christ, 
I have performed the task with great pleasure, and hand 
over the result to the public, assured that it will minister 
to many light in darkness, relief in doubt, and encourage- 
ment in the pressures and strain of ordinary duty. My con- 
fidence rests on the fact that the character here portrayed, 
though not faultless, is so pure, lofty, and self-denying, as 
to bear, if a faint, yet a real resemblance to that of the 
Lord Jesus, and consequently presents, in one of our- 
selves, features in which men of all forms of religion may 
find something to love, admire, and imitate. 

The author, speaking in his few preparatory words, 
from the point of time when he wrote, implies that the 
struggle between the Federals and the Confederates was 
then still proceeding. As what he says serves for a date 
to the composition, I have left the passage as I found it. 
One or two other passages in the body of the volume, 
containing a similar implication, I have modified so as to 
bring them into agreement with the fact that the conflict 
had come to a close when the translation was issued. 



CHAPTEE I. 



CHILDHOOD AND EAELY YOUTH. 

Birth of Theodore Parker — His family — His domestic education — The 
little tortoise — The little fairy — Readings— The "Whortleberry Bible — 
Entrance at Harvard College — Hard times at Boston — Better weather 
at "Watertown— Fine days begin to dawn — Miss Lydia Cabot. 

Theodore Parker was born the 24th of August, 1810, 
at Lexington, in Massachusetts, where his family, of the 
old Puritan stock, which originally belonging to Yorkshire 
in England, had emigrated to America in 1635, was 
settled at the beginning of the 18th century. His grand- 
father distinguished himself as a soldier in the Canadian 
war, at the capture of Quebec, and more especially in the 
war of American independence. He displayed even a 
true heroism in the battle of Bunker's Hill, which com- 
menced the sanguinary struggle wherein the American 
Union was to come forth so gloriously triumphant. His 
father, who was 50 years old in 1810, united, as did so 
many cultivators of New England, solid information to 
great manual dexterity. More of a mechanic than a 
farmer, and possessing remarkable skill in mathematics, he 
constructed for his neighbours " wheels, pumps, and farm- 
ing gear." He was also a great reader, very fond of the 
Bible, although somewhat sceptical as to miracles, and a 
warm friend of popular education, which he endeavoured 
to extend as much as possible in the rustic circle of which 
he was one of the most valued oracles. He was one of 
those cold and strong men, thoroughly honest, who never 



6 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



hesitate between duty and interest, and whose memory 
is a source of ceaseless benediction to their children when 
they too are engaged in the battle of life. His wife, not 
less zealous in the performance of duty, was nevertheless 
very different in character. Graceful, delicate, adroit as 
a fairy, and charitable as a saint — such is the portrait of 
her left us by her son, who lost her when quite young, 
and who fondly cherished her memory. Very often in 
his dreams he thought of her fine blue Puritan eyes, dark, 
pure, austere, but all bright with love for her Benjamin; 
for Theodore was the youngest of six children. 

The Parkers were Unitarians, as so many other de- 
scendants of the Pilgrim. Fathers at Boston and in the 
whole of New England. It is known that Unitarianism 
is that branch of Protestantism which has for its funda- 
mental principle the doctrine of the absolute unity of 
God. Resting on this basis Unitarians reject the doctrine 
of the Trinity, which teaches that God is one, and never- 
theless exists in three distinct persons, equal and co- 
eternal. They accordingly acknowledge only the Father 
as God, consider the Holy Spirit to be his power, his 
action in man's soul, not a person, and assign to the Son 
a subordinate rank. In general, their theology has a less 
tragical and more optimist character than the other Pro- 
testant systems. This dogmatic system however had oc- 
casioned no marked change in the way in which the 
Parker family lived. They continued faithful to the 
simple and laborious existence of their ancestors. Theirs 
was a busy household. Children had come in great num- 
ber. The good old grandmother was still alive — more 
than 80 years of age. She was seen to come down-stairs 
every day at dinner hour, and solemnly take at table the 
place of honour which was reserved for her. After the 
meal, she took to her knitting, except on Sundays. On 
that day she read her old Quarto Bible, the Oxford Edi- 



CHILDHOOD AND EARLY YOUTH. 



7 



tion, which she had received from her husband, who him- 
self had bought it for the price of more than one load of 
bay, delivered at Boston. The original edition of the 
Puritan Hymn-book was also much in her hands. " It 
was," says Theodore, "a part of my childish business to 
carry the drink to my venerable grandmother twice a day, 
at 11 a. m. and 4 P. M. \ this was nip in cool weather, 
and in spring and summer was toddy or punch — the latter, 
however, was more commonly reserved for festive oc- 
casions." 

Notwithstanding these burdens, comparative ease 
reigned in the house, owing to the sober manner of its 
life, the persevering industry of the father, who was as- 
sisted by his older sons, and the ingenious economy of the 
mother. The last was the angel of the household. If the 
father represented its regular and correct prose, she was 
its poetry. She loved the silent prayer of the heart ; the 
English poets were her favourite authors ; she sang popu- 
lar songs to her children, and took the greatest care of 
their moral education. During the long evenings of 
winter, Mr Parker read to his wife and children instruct- 
ive extracts, on which he commented with perspicuity 
and good sense. A fact to be noted is, that all the family, 
the females no less than the males, read the local news- 
papers. All this breathed a spirit of propriety and self- 
respect. It was a Protestant family of the olden time, a 
little self-absorbed, but eager for knowledge and open to 
light, in which the father is the priest and the mother 
the confessor, while all are united, contented, peaceful. 
Those who hold that moral dispositions are hereditary, 
may find a confirmation of their views in this sketch of 
the Parker family. In reality they will find in Theodore, 
by the side of scholarship which he only had opportunity 
to acquire, the practical sense of the father, the poetical 
and mystical inclinations of the mother, and even the 



8 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



warlike propensities of the grandfather. Moreover, it is 
easy to see that if the surroundings of the young Theodore 
did not offer to his earliest years great resources for the 
development of his intelligence, it was impossible to live 
in a circle more favourable to the formation of character. 
His parents endeavoured systematically to unfold in him 
the faculties whose use most contributes to ripen the 
judgment, namely, comparison, observation, and habits of 
decision, arising from acquaintance with our determining 
motives. He was early taught to consult his own moral 
and religious sense. " The spirit of free inquiry,'' he 
says, " was encouraged in me in all ways and in every 
sense." He was free to read all the books in the house, 
but he was not permitted to take a new one until he 
showed that he understood what he had read in the for- 
mer. One trait more will complete the picture of this 
simple and manly training. It comes from his own hand : 
" During all my childhood I never heard my parents utter 
one single word which was irreligious or superstitious." 

We will also allow him to recount in his own terms 
an incident of his early life, in which you already discern 
what he will afterwards be — a man of an imperious and 
indomitable conscience. " When a little boy in petti- 
coats, in my fourth year, one fine day in spring, my father 
led me by the hand to a distant part of the farm, but soon 
sent me home alone. On the way I had to pass a little 
6 pond-hole,' then spreading its waters wide ; a rhodora* 
in full bloom, a rare flower in my neighbourhood, and 
which grew only in that locality, attracted my attention, 
and drew me to the place. I saw a little spotted tortoise 
sunning himself in the shallow water at the root of the 

* The Canadian Rhodora (Greek r7wdo?i, a rose) of the Ericacea? 
family, containing, besides the genus Erica, the Azalea, the Rhodo- 
dendron, the Kalmia, Arbutus, Andromedas, Gualtherias, and many 
other beautiful genera. 



CHILDHOOD AND EARLY YOUTH. 



9 



flaming shrub. I lifted the stick I had in my hand to 
strike the harmless reptile ; for though I had never killed 
any creature, yet I had seen other boys out of sport de- 
stroy birds, squirrels, and the like, and I felt a disposition 
to follow their wicked example. But all at once some- 
thing checked my little arm, and a voice within me said, 
clear and loud, ' It is wrong ! ' I held back my uplifted 
stick in wonder at the new emotion, the consciousness of 
an involuntary, but inward check upon my actions, till 
the tortoise and the rfiodora both vanished from my sight. 
I hastened home and told the tale to my mother, and 
asked what it was that told me it was wrong. She wiped 
a tear from her eye with her apron, and taking me in her 
arms, said, ' Some men call it conscience, but I prefer to 
call it the voice of God in the soul of man. If you listen 
and obey it, then it will speak clearer and clearer, and 
always guide you right ; but if you turn a deaf ear or dis- 
obey, then it will fade out little by little, and leave you 
all in the dark, and without a guide. Tour life depends 
on heeding this little voice.' She went her way, careful 
and troubled about many things, but doubtless pondered 
them in her motherly heart ; while I went off to wonder 
and think it over in my poor childish way. But I am 
sure no event in my life has made so deep and lasting im- 
pression on me." 

This is a vigorous awaking of conscience in a child, 
but that child is a little Yankee, who, while admiring the 
inner voice which speaks to him, is quite ready to con- 
sider any intervention of a third party in his affairs very 
impertinent. 

At six years he went to school, where, it seems, a 
certain tendency to practical jokes made him somewhat 
feared by his companions. With rare perfection he 
imitated the manners, the language, the gait of others ; 
something of that dangerous talent, often found in per- 



10 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



sons richly endowed in intelligence, imagination, and 
sympathy, remained with him at the University and in his 
public life. Moreover, he became strong and skilful, while 
he excelled as a patron of small boys that were tyrannized 
over. At seven he had toward a little girl of the neigh- 
bourhood one of those, so to say unconscious, infantine in- 
clinations, more frequent than is thought, the recollection 
of which remains sweet and fragrant to the end of life. 

"I was about seven years old," he once wrote to a 
friend, Mr George Ripley, " when a very pretty little girl 
made her appearance at our humble village school. She 
was from seven to eight years of age. She fascinated me 
to such a degree that I could no longer look at my books, 
and I was scolded for not having got my lessons ; a thing 
that had never happened to me before, and that never 
happened to me again after the departure of the little fairy. 
She remained only a week with us, and I wept bitterly 
when she went away. She was so pretty ! I dared not 
speak to her, but I liked to walk round her, like a but- 
terfly round a flower in the fields. She was called Nar- 
cissa. She fell into the ocean of time, and disappeared 
before I had attained my eighth year." 

These truly are indications of great precocity, attested 
moreover by the astonishing rapidity of his physical and 
intellectual development. At an early age he had to 
divide his time between school and the labours of the 
farm. Mr Parker had solid reasons for putting his chil- 
dren to work as soon as might be. This however did not 
prevent Theodore from being an insatiable reader when 
only eight years old. He had few volumes at his disposal, 
but the small number was better than many libraries. 
He had the Bible, the English poets, his mother's favour- 
ites ; some Latin and Greek classics, Homer, Plutarch, 
Virgil, which he read first in translations, but soon in the 
original, for a Unitarian minister of the neighbourhood, 



CHILDHOOD AND EARLY YOUTH. 



11 



Jlr "W. "WTiite, noticing his happy dispositions, gave him 
lessons in Latin and Greek.* 

Besides, his father possessed works on mathematics, 
travels, and Natural History, which he devoured so as to 
know them by heart. At 10 years of age he had, after 
his manner, catalogued the Flora of the neighbourhood. 
At 12 he, one fine night, discovered with his naked eye 
the crescent appearance peculiar to the planet Yenus. 
Forthwith he everywhere searches for a book on astro- 
nomy, and reads it eagerly. Already he surpassed the 
majority of children brought up in cities, and, like a 
veritable American, he always invented some ingenious 
means of supplementing the disadvantage of his position. 
For instance, he greatly desired to have a Bible for his 
own use. That of the family was cumbersome and too 
valuable to be given up to the boy, and he had not a 
penny of his own toward purchasing one. He was not, 
however, to be defeated. He went and gathered whortle- 
berries in a neighbouring wood, took them to Boston for 
sale, and in this way obtained money sufficient to procure 
for himself a copy of the divine volume. He also found 

* The name Jesus, which he remarked in a Catholic cradle hymn, 
filled him with an intense desire to know the meaning. Almost 40 years 
after he fell in with it again and translated it thus : 
" Dormi, Jesu — mater ridet ; 
Quae tam dulcem somnum videt ; 

Dormi, Jesu, blandule ! 
Si non dormis, mater plorat ; 
Inter fila cantans orat, 
Blande, veni, somnule ! " 

u Slumber, Jesus, — mother smileth, 
As sweet sleep her babe beguileth ; 

Darling Jesus, go to sleep ! 
If art waking, mother mourneth, 
Singing as her spindle turneth, 
Gently, little slumber, creep." 



12 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



time to learn French and Spanish. Thus did his youth 
pass away. 

However, in proportion as the young Parkers grew up, 
the needs of the household went on decreasing, and on 
the sole condition of not being a burden to his parents, 
Theodore was enabled to think of the means of entering 
into some liberal course of life. One evening in the autumn 
of 1830 he had been absent all the day, and did not return 
home till midnight. Proceeding at once to the chamber 
of his aged father, " Father," he said, " I entered Harvard 
College to-day." This college is a university founded at 
Cambridge, not far from Boston, where young New Eng- 
landers go in great numbers to take their degrees in learn- 
ing. He had spent the whole day in undergoing the ex- 
aminations required as preliminaries to admission. The 
old man was not less disquieted at hearing the announce- 
ment than he had been at the prolonged absence of his 
son. "Why, Theodore," he said, "you know I cannot 
support you there." " I know that, father, and my in- 
tention is to provide the necessary means by giving les- 
sons or opening a school." Indeed his plan was to get 
out of the difficulty by combining the duties of an educator 
with the studies in the Academy. This plan was easier to 
conceive than to execute. It required all his determined 
energy, all his steadiness of purpose and character, all 
his ardour in study, to overcome the numberless obstacles 
which lay on his path. At first he lived at Boston, an 
under-master in a private school, gaining three or four 
pounds a month ; consecrating the greater part of his 
nights to study ; visiting no friendly domestic circle, no 
place of recreation ; sometimes dejected, melancholy, de- 
sirous of death ; but still rising from his momentary de- 
pressions, recovering courage in his honourable and 
haughty poverty, and perhaps recalling to mind the old 
motto of his family : Semper aude, Be daring ever. His 



CHILDHOOD AXD EARLY YOUTH. 



13 



health suffered greatly from this excess of effort, and his 
physical disorder visibly aggravated that of his mind. At 
last, seeing that he should never realize his purposes at 
Boston, he removed to Watertown, where, without a 
penny, without a pupil, he opened a school on his own 
account. Beginning with two scholars, he soon had more 
than 50 ; for pupils under his direction made marvellous 
progress, an advantage which they owed to the extraor- 
dinary affection with which he inspired them toward 
himself. The only shade in the picture was the pressure 
exercised by the parents of his young people, to induce 
him to dismiss a little coloured girl who had been in- 
trusted to his care. The prejudice which still prevails in 
the States on this point is very strong. Parker blamed 
himself throughout his life for having yielded to this com- 
pulsion. But the question touched the very existence of 
his school, as yet scarcely founded, and thereby concerned 
all his hopes ; and his ideas as to the duties of the whites 
toward the blacks had not then the definiteness nor the 
energy which they afterwards acquired. However, the 
dawn of a brighter day began to rise for him. Always 
economical and rigid toward himself even in extreme, he 
amassed penny by penny the money which would enable 
him to study at the university as a regular student. The 
Unitarian minister of the neighbourhood, Mr Francis, an 
intelligent and well-read man, who afterwards occupied a 
professional chair at Cambridge, had, at the same time, 
opened to him his house and his library. Parker, who 
had learnt German during his stay at Boston, initiated 
himself in the German literature, especially the theolo- 
gical ; studies, so to say, unknown at that time iu America, 
not less than in many another country nearer the Rhine. 
It was only a few choice spirits that began to suspect 
that in the German universities an incomparaWe religious 
science was being wrought out, which was destined to 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARXEB. 



transform all the official theologies. Numerous as were 
the hours which his school duties demanded, and large as 
was the tax on his time and energy exacted by his private 
studies, he yet found leisure to go twice a week to Cam- 
bridge to take lessons in Hebrew. What w r as more 
pleasant, if not more profitable, he found, or made, a way 
to fall in love, and to tell his tale to the lady, Miss Lydia 
Cabot,* a charming young person, of remarkable beauty, 
who also gave instructions in the little town, and was his 
co-worker in the Sunday School. 

A pleasing incident in the life of this young man was 
the interview which he had with his aged father in order 
to impart to him his matrimonial intentions. Parker has 
himself reported it in a letter to his betrothed : 

" Watertown, Tuesday eve, Oct. 30, 1833. 
"I walked to father's; he soon returned from church, and I 
caught him in the garden, and informed him of the ' fatal ' affair, if 
you will call it so. The tear actually started to his aged eye. 
' Indeed ? ' said he. Indeed, I replied, and attempted to describe some 
of your good qualities. ' It is a good while to wait,' he observed. 
Yes, but we are young, and I hope I have your approval. ' Yes, yes ! 
I should be pleased with any one you would select ; — but, Theodore,' 
said he, and the words sank deep into my heart, ' you must be a good 
man and a good husband; which is a great undertaking.' I 
promised all good fidelity, and may Heaven see it kept ! " 

There were now a few moments of relaxation every 
day. He discovered that the banks of the Beaver Creek, 
the aged oaks which overshadow it, and the surrounding 
hills, formed the finest landscape in the world. The 
flowers gathered in rural excursions were brought home 
not merely from the love of botany. But the small lamp 
of the indefatigable student only burnt on the farther 
into the night. At last Parker saw himself in possession 
of a small capital just sufficient to pass the required time 
at the University. 

* The Cabot family is old and honoured in Massachusetts. Its 
members trace back their genealogy to the famous navigator, Sebastian 
Cabot. 



15 



CHAPTER II. 

EELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 

Religion of the Parker family — Unitarianism — Its advantages — Parker's 
final rupture with Calvinism — Timidities and darings — What he did 
at the University — Old Paul — Condition of religious progress— What 
tradition and criticism said of the Bible— History of Dogmas — Re- 
ligions compared — Miracles — Essential Christianity — Parish of West 
Roxbury. 

We must turn back in order to give some account of 
the principles and religious development of Theodore 
Parker. 

His parents, we have said, were pious Unitarians. 
Their Unitarianism was not narrow or dogmatic. From 
all that is known of Parker's childhood it appears that 
dogma, properly so called, held very little place in the 
reading and the conversations of the family. The cold 
and practical character of the father, the thoughtful and 
sentimental disposition of the mother, equally contributed 
to keep at a distance from the domestic horizon what is 
either purely theoretical or stereotyped. The Bible was 
read; public worship was frequented; but alike in that 
sacred book and in the weekly services, what was sought 
for was what went to the heart, what enlightened the 
conscience, what spake to the soul of God. The rest was 
of small consequence. Admirably counselled and directed 
in regard to morals, the young Theodore was pretty much 
left to himself in the matter of religious doctrine ; but 
his youthful reflection soon turned to that domain which 



13 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



called forth a desire for knowledge surpassing every other. 
It followed that his religious beliefs were formed step by 
step with his general culture, and not without receiving 
an unavoidable influence from surrounding traditions, al- 
though he never saw in them a yoke to which he must of 
necessity bend his neck. " My head," he has somewhere 
said, " is not more natural to my body than my religion is 
to my soul." As soon as he began to think he felt an 
unutterable horror at the idea of everlasting punishment, 
which he had seen set forth in an old catechism, and it 
was a delightful relief to him when he learnt that there 
were excellent Christians w T ho did not believe in the doc- 
trine. He listened with rapture to what his mother said 
to him of the beauteous character of Jesus. His loved 
companions, the flowers and the stars, soon told him the 
impressive tale of the glory of God. He was specially 
struck with a feeling of Grod's infinitude, and he ever ex- 
perienced an intense joy in the thought of that omnipre- 
sence and that boundless activity, which pervade all 
things, and reveal themselves to the religious mind in 
every part of the universe. As he approached manhood, 
his ideas touching the Bible, its inspiration, its miracles, 
had as yet nothing very definite, and did not rise above 
the ordinary level of the Unitarian beliefs, in the bosom 
of which he had been brought up. 

This Unitarian education was an immense privilege 
for the young man. Prom how many prejudices and 
narrownesses w r as he thereby preserved! Unitarianism 
aspires to give man a religion at once enlightened and 
favourable to morality, in agreement with the institutions, 
the liberties, and the new w^ants of modern society. By 
its worship, its ethics, its general tone, it is connected 
with the great church of the Beformation ; but while, like 
it, founding its doctrines on the Bible, it interprets the 
sacred writings so as to eliminate from the body of its re- 



RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 



17 



ligious instruction the old irrational and contradictory 
dogmas. Nothing in Unitarianism opposed, on the con- 
trary everything favoured, social and political progress. 
It spread around its steps a beneficent atmosphere of pro- 
gressive liberalism and religious toleration. It had no 
favour for that austere and monkish devotion, endurable 
perhaps in the bosom of populations which do not hold 
productive labour in honour; but it firmly maintained 
the grand principles of Christian morality, which are 
meant to guide and ennoble a life of labour, and to call 
forth and cherish the domestic and social virtues. Ac- 
cordingly in its ranks were recruited the most courageous 
and influential patrons of great public ameliorations and 
philanthropic institutions. "Whilst, for instance, on the 
question of slavery, the orthodoxy of the South of the 
Union, and, in great part, that of the Worth, became more 
and more the humble servants of the selfish interests 
pledged to the maintenance of that horrible institution ; 
whilst, in a superstitious adoration of the letter of the 
Bible, forgetting that if the letter of the Gospel utters 
no formal word against slavery, its spirit condemns the 
vile practice peremptorily, they did not blush to put the 
barbarous system under the protection of the sacred 
books ; — it was specially in the bosom of Unitarianism 
that the abolitionist ferment arose, which, though long 
despised, is now the first power in the Union. This 
Unitarian Church, large and progressive, liberal and 
earnest, saw its adherents every day increase in number 
in New England, and there, when it did not supplant 
other Churches, it kept alive a permanent centre of 
liberalism and reform, which radiated over the religious 
world. Thus indirectly Unitarianism has exercised very 
great influence on religion in America, and it would be a 
great error to take the official number of its adherents for 

the full measure of its actual progress. By little and 

2 



18 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



little a large number of Universalist churches, also Baptist 
and Presbyterian, received the leaven of Unitarian liberal- 
ism, and were gradually transformed. Preachers of high 
merit, such as Henry "Ware and the illustrious Channing, 
accelerated the pacific movement, and, especially the 
second, compensated the defects of TJnitarianism by the dif- 
fusive warmth of their heart and character. We have used 
the word defects : and, in truth, by the side of the excel- 
lent philanthropic spirit which distinguished the American 
Unitarians, there were serious shortcomings, which could 
not fail to become more manifest as its influence grew. 
Theologically their Unitarianism was richer in good inten- 
tions than in results. Many enlightened men who felt the 
want of a simple practical religion, and could no longer 
tolerate the yoke of the old orthodoxy, breathed at their 
ease in that softer and freer atmosphere. It may be a 
question whether religion, in becoming more gentle, did 
not part with some of its robustness. A certain dryness, 
an illogical and utilitarian rationalism, occasioned regret 
for the irrational, but nevertheless imposing and impres- 
sive, dogmas of traditional orthodoxy. Deism, with its 
blights and frosts, showed its head in many quarters. 
Mysticism, that element inseparable from all living reli- 
gion, and perfectly legitimate so long as, confining itself 
to the sphere of sentiment, it does not pretend to tyran- 
nize over reason and conscience — found itself reduced in 
Unitarianism to the condition of an angel whose wings 
had been dipt. Philosophy and Biblical criticism it 
wholly lacked, as did the whole of Anglo-Saxon Protest- 
antism of that period. The sensualism of Locke reigned 
in the theological school of both " Old England " and 
New. As this system reduced the human soul to a state 
of complete passiveness, as logically it issues in either 
materialism or scepticism, and yet does not disown the 
interior voices of the soul, which loudly call for beliefs, 



RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 



19 



duties, and hopes, its partisans commonly took refuge in 
the idea of an external and miraculous revelation, which 
imposed itself on man with the arbitrariness of absolute 
authority. Thus Unitarianism, so liberal in matters of 
dogma, remained riveted to the supernatural point of 
view and to the ancient ideas concerning the miraculous 
origin and authority of the Bible. It was as skilful as 
orthodoxy in bending, at its pleasure, the texts of Scrip- 
ture which ill accorded with its particular doctrines, and 
if some evil genius had resolved that the Athanasian creed 
should be in the Bible, its theologians would certainly 
have undertaken to prove that the document did not teach 
the Trinity. Such, with its advantages and disadvantages, 
was the theological position whose most eminent repre- 
sentatives Parker was to find at Cambridge. In addition, 
he obtained an opportunity of closely studying the old 
Calvinistic orthodoxy, which was still the faith of the 
majority, and which, owing to immigration from Europe, 
especially of English blood, every day received con- 
siderable reinforcements, which amply compensated its 
losses. In his childhood and around his father's house, 
he had become acquainted with honourable supporters of 
the ancient faith of the Pilgrim Fathers. During his 
sojourn in the capacity of tutor at Boston, he had as- 
siduously attended the orthodox preachings of Lyman 
Beecher, then in all the brilliancy of his talent. " One 
year of that preaching," he said, " was enough to put an 
end in me to all the influence which the Calvinistic the- 
ology might exercise over my mind." The dark sides of 
that doctrine, which sets forth God as arbitrarily pre- 
destinating some individuals to salvation and the immense 
majority of the human race to eternal damnation, were 
always deeply offensive to him. Nevertheless, he did not 
himself yet suspect the consequences of the resolution he 
had formed to seek religious truth in complete independ- 

2 * 



20 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



ence. In becoming, under Dr Francis, acquainted with 
Grerman literature and theology, he had been surprised, 
and even shocked, at the liberty of thought and speech 
which in Biblical matters prevailed in those unknown 
regions, and which contrasted so forcibly with the pro- 
found, scrupulous, and easily superstitious respect which, 
like all the Protestant American Churches, the Unitarian 
Church professed for the Bible and the whole of its con- 
tents. "When he began to read Eichhorn's " Introduction 
to the Old Testament," he fell on his knees and besought 
God to keep him from being misled in his search after truth, 
by the reasonings of unbelievers. We possess a summary 
of the religious opinions he then entertained, addressed 
by himself to one of his nephews, Columbus Greene. 

" Cambridge, April 2, 1834. 

" You inquire about my belief. I believe in the Bible. Does 
that satisfy you ? No, you will say; all Christians profess to do the 
same, and how different they are. 

" To commence, then : I believe there is one God, who has ex- 
isted from all eternity, with whom the past, present, and future 
are alike present ; that He is almighty, good, and merciful, will re- 
ward the good and punish the wicked, both in this life and the next. 
This punishment may be eternal ; * of course, I believe that neither 
the rewards nor punishments of a future state are corporal. Bodily 
pleasures soon satiate, and may God preserve us from a worse punish- 
ment than one's own conscience ! 

" I believe the books of the Old and New Testament to have been 
written by men inspired of God for certain purposes, but I do not 
think them inspired at all times. I believe that Christ was the Son 
of God, conceived and born in a miraculous manner, that he came to 
preach a better religion by which men may be saved. 

" This religion, as I think, allows men the very highest happiness 
in this life and promises eternal felicity in another world. I do not 
think our sins will be forgiven because Christ died. I cannot con- 
ceive why they should be, although many good and great men have 
thought so. I believe God knows all that we shall do, but does not 
cause us to do anything." 

* In this confession of faith, evidently inspired by a fear of wounding, 
Parker by the possibility of eternal punishment means such as would 
ensue from a voluntiry and eternal continuance in sin. 



RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 



21 



In this exposition of his beliefs, the doctrines of 
orthodoxy are softened down, or reduced to their mini- 
mum, if they are not completely eliminated. The Trinity 
is represented only by the miraculous birth of Jesus. The 
inspiration of the Bible is not uninterrupted, consequently 
it is not absolute ; whence it follows that conscience must 
decide what portions of it cannot pretend to that preroga- 
tive. The dictatorial authority of the Bible is then vir- 
tually set aside. The reader will also have noticed the 
utilitarian and optimist tone of this creed. This is a 
feature that Parker owed to the whole of his education, 
to his own frank and robust nature ; he will preserve the 
quality, but he will also ennoble it by a most elevated 
spiritualism. We must now follow the transformations 
that his faith underwent in proportion as the field of his 
studies enlarged. 

At the university, as at Boston and "Watertown, he 
was the most indefatigable of workers. His industry 
went to such an extent that at the end of some months 
he had got in advance of the greater number even of his 
teachers. He excelled in the exercises of discussion, but 
did not yet promise to be the brilliant orator he after- 
wards became : — a fact not at all surprising. Preaching as 
an academical exercise, before an imaginary auditory, is, 
for the Protestant student in theology, what the Messe 
blanche * with the host unconsecrated, is for the young 
Catholic Levite. Parker was a great orator the moment 
when preaching became with him a conflict, a battle with- 
out quarter. The sarcastic side of his character freely 
showed itself in his youthful exercises. One day, when 

* Messe blanche (literally White Mass) is an exercise in saying or 
performing Mass by which the candidate for the Catholic priesthood is 
taught the due and formal discharge of his duty, when in orders. The 
essential difference is that in the White Mass the wafer is taken without 
receiving the divinizing and transmuting power of consecration. T. 



22 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



the not very reverent appellation Old Paul escaped from 
his lips, as he spoke of the Apostle to the Gentiles, he 
replied to the professor, who rebuked the offender ; " Yes, 
sir, you are right, I should have said 6 the gentleman of 
Tarsus.' " 

But we must not judge of his real dispositions by this 
momentary outburst, which was connected with a growing 
dislike he had for mere conventionalisms. There is a 
manner of citing Paul the aged (Phil. 9) which denotes a 
profound and therefore respectful study of the writings 
of the first of Church Reformers, more than complimentary 
invocations in honour of the canonized Saint. We readily 
grow familiar with grandeurs which we examine minutely 
and much ; and Parker examined everything much, and 
ever more minutely. He read the Fathers, enjoyed the 
best literature of the Mystics, made himself acquainted 
with the history of dogmas and the ancient religions, 
gathered around him the best German expositors, and 
eager always to widen the circle of his studies, and seeing 
the universe enlarge as he knew it more and more, he- 
succeeded in carrying on, side by side with the study of 
theology, the study of half a score of languages dead and 
living. His health again suffered from the excess of 
labour he imposed on himself. Sometimes a cherished 
hand (the reader will guess to whom it belonged) sent to 
him from Watertown entreaties (which in such a case are 
sweet commands) that he would not compromise his future 
by undue efforts. For a few days obedience was the re- 
sult, but his passion for knowledge and for clear insight, 
what may be termed Yankee go-aheadness, resumed the 
mastery. However, while thus exploring history and the 
universe, he acquired a vast amount of knowledge. 

Your horizon cannot widen without elevating your 
ideal. It would be easy to show that all the principal 
religious ascents of the human race have coincided with a 



RELIGIOUS EDUCATION, 



23 



notable enlargement of the intellectual horizon. The 
most elevated Greek philosophy came into existence after 
events had brought the Greeks into contact with the 
East. The Judaism of the times which preceded Christ 
was formed, not under the dictation but in the midst, and 
at the impulse more or less direct, of Persian and Greek 
influences. Christianity comes forth at the moment when 
the ancient world, till then split up into nationalities in- 
different if not hostile to each other, acquires a knowledge 
of itself, and when national partialities began to disappear 
in a community of subjection and endurance under the 
yoke of Rorae. The Reformation had for its mother the 
new spirit, full of independence and hardihood, which an- 
tiquity had laid open, great discoveries, acquaintance with 
the world increased more than threefold, breathed into 
modern Europe. And in our own days, when geo- 
graphical, scientific, and industrial discoveries are chang- 
ing the face of society, we witness a fresh evolution of 
the imperishable Christian idea. The reason of these co- 
incidences is simple. Religious progress is accomplished 
only by means of a certain enfeeblement of the forces of 
tradition. As long as it speaks alone, tradition stamps 
on all its lessons the seal of the eternal and the universal, 
the appearance of the absolute ; hence its religious potency, 
for the seal of the absolute is an attestation of divinity. 
Xothing then more surely damages its authority than to 
discover that what was thought a reality is but an ap- 
pearance. I am very far from thinking that the study of 
languages and religions, the fine investigations of astro- 
nomy and geology, the modern researches of historical 
and Biblical history, must detach us from the Gospel, 
and make us desire a religion absolutely new. On the 
contrary, 1 hold that if anything pleads in favour of the 
religion of Jesus, it is that it remains intact and unin- 
jured, at least as to its essential principles, while facts, 



24 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



ideas, minds, and institutions change all around it. But 
in view of all that is now known of the world and its 
history, I say that all the old theology is destined to be 
reformed, all the old methods of presenting and defending 
the divinity of the Gospel are convicted of impotence, all 
the old dogmas are threatened with death, and that those 
only are the intelligent friends of Christianity who, 
discerning the signs of the times, labour, according to 
their strength, to bring it into harmony with the spirit of 
its Founder and with the imperative needs of modern 
culture. 

Such nearly was the course which the thoughts of 
Parker followed in the degree in which human and divine * 
things unfolded themselves to his mind enamoured of 
truth. We have stated that American TJnitarianism, far 
in advance of other Churches in relation to dogmas pro- 
perly so called, yet moved on the same level as they 
in regard to an external and miraculous revelation, im- 
posing its authority on reason and conscience, and con- 
tained exclusively in the Bible. It was by interpretations 
now very legitimate, now very arbitrary, that it nattered 
itself to put to silence the protests of the moral sense 
and of enlightened intelligence. Indeed, Biblical cri- 
ticism, already completely emancipated in Germany, was 
still in its infancy among the Unitarians of America. 
Parker, who read the Germans, soon felt himself re- 
strained by the theories of his professors, who still dealt 
with the Bible as a uniform and invariable whole, without 
giving due heed to the circumstances which had presided 
over the drawing-up, the revisal, and the putting to- 
gether, of the books of which it at present consists. 

Tradition said, "The Bible is one, it is God's revela- 
tion to humankind, it is a supernatural book which, from 
its first to its last line, is God's word." Criticism had a 
reply to make. Firstly, even were it so, in order that the 



RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 



25 



Eible which people now read may be an infallible book, 
the translations of it must be infallible, and the scholars 
who read it in the original tongues must be of one mind, 
instead of being divided and undecided, as to the meaning 
of many an important passage. Then we must possess 
this miraculous text in its primitive integrity, without 
the shadow of a variation, whereas the variations known 
to exist in the manuscripts are counted by myriads. But 
— and this deserves special attention — tradition seems to 
have forgotten that, in the Christian economy, the Bible 
is neither a primitive fact nor a simple fact, defying 
analysis. The Bible as now in our hands is composed of 
two distinct parts, the Old Testament (or Covenant) and 
the Xew ; the former, the regulative source of the Jewish 
religion ; the latter, the primeval record of Christianity 
in its earliest years. But the first is made up of 39 books, 
which came into existence at different dates extending 
over many centuries; the second consists of 27 books, 
which, agreeing in their principal aim, differ as to their 
age and authorship. T\Tho put together the elements 
which form this collection or that ? The question re- 
mains unanswerable in regard to the Old Testament, 
which was not rigorously closed when Jesus came into 
the world. Our ignorance is not much less in regard to 
the New, the canon of which was not precisely determined 
until the fifth century, and then only after many varia- 
tions, after certain writings which it now contains had 
been long rejected or unknown, and certain others, now 
excluded from the canon, had long been in possession of 
an authority equal to that of the canonical books. On 
what miraculous inspiration did the formers of the canon 
rely in making their selection? They were liable to 
error no less than we. How then can you maintain the 
infallibility of a volume compiled by fallible men ? 

Something might be said if an attentive examination 



26 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



of the canonical books justified what they did. By no 
means is it so. The traditional canon ascribes to Moses 
five books evidently composed of documents diverse alike 
in date and spirit, the last of which tells of his death. To 
the prophet Isaiah prophecies are ascribed which must be 
divided into two distinct groups, separated the one from 
the other by an interval of at least 150 years. To King 
David are ascribed a number of psalms, a majority, if not 
a great majority, of which are long posterior to their 
alleged author. To Daniel, who is thought to have lived 
at the time of the Babylonish Captivity, is ascribed a 
series of oracles manifestly drawn up under Antiochus 
Epiphanes. In a similar way, our actual New Testament 
attributes to the Apostle Paul what is called the Epistle 
to the Hebrews, which he cannot have written ; and to 
the Apostle Peter, a second epistle, which supposes that, 
when it was written, the whole of the first Christian 
generation was dead, 2 Pet. iii. 3—9. These are the most 
salient facts which criticism has brought to light, and 
demonstrated so positively that the most fastidious of 
those who have seriously occupied themselves with the 
subject, have been compelled to yield to the evidence. If 
now we pass on to the contents of the books, we find our- 
selves unable to regard as a continual divine revelation 
those narratives or those instructions in which it is easy 
to point out so many astronomical, physical, and historical 
errors ; accounts which contradict each other ; miracles 
decidedly impossible even in the judgment of those who 
are inclined to believe in miracles ; and whose legendary 
and mythical character forces itself on the assent of every 
unprejudiced mind ; besides those gross ideas of God re- 
presented as an imperfect, wrathful, vindictive, and ar- 
bitrary being. Moreover, is it fancied that the Bible from 
one end to another contains one and the same doctrine ? 
This is what the Unitarians still think, and thence springs 



RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 



27 



their way of wresting the Scripture. On this point they 
have nothing to impute to other Christian sects, all of 
which exercise their ingenuity in forcing the Bible to 
speak in the language of their own peculiar dogmas. But 
with the attentive observer this unity of Biblical doctrine 
is an illusion. To confine ourselves to the New Testa- 
ment, the doctrine of the three first Gospels is one, that 
of the fourth is another; Paul's teachings differ from 
those of James and those of the Apocalypse. No longer 
then think of imposing on Christians the doctrine of the 
Bible, for it has several forms. 

The sacred enclosure being thus pierced at more points 
than one, the advancing waves of criticism soon flooded 
the whole. The history of Church dogmas will not less 
powerfully contribute to detach the young theologian 
from the dogmatic tradition of the past. It has done so 
in Germany, and with the hand of a master. If the 
Unitarian finds in the results ampler confirmations of the 
impeachments made by his denomination against the 
Trinity, original sin, vicarious redemption ; if he sees that 
he has been completely in the right in declaring that 
Christianity in itself is altogether independent of these 
dogmas ; that it lived before them, and, in consequence, 
will live after them ; he ought also to acknowledge that 
the Church of his choice has, not more than others, 
escaped from the illusion that Christian antiquity was 
exactly what he is, and he ought to admit that it is vain 
to desire, at any cost, to take for his model a primitive 
Church which had its share of grave errors and defects. 
True Christianity, that which really corresponds to the 
intentions and the spirit of the master, is a-head, and not 
in the rear of men of our days. Finally, the comparative 
study of forms of religion, mythologies, nations, languages, 
has aroused in the mind of the thinker a question which 
must altogether renew theology. Christianity, however 



28 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



superior to all other historical religions, is not by its 
miraculous origin so separated from them that they are 
to be contrasted with it purely as falsity with truth. The 
history of religions presents phenomena which may be 
called not equal but similar to the phenomena observable 
in the study of Christianity. Zoroaster, Mahomet, 
Buddha, are not judged when they are hastily put into 
the category of dupes or impostors. And when you are 
led to see that you may classify religions as you classify 
plants or rocks or animals ; when you discover the im- 
manent law of that religious development of our race, 
which, on this domain as on others, has little by little 
risen from matter to mind, from the most puerile feticism 
to the sublimest conception of God, do you not find it 
surpassingly more reasonable to admit that not only 
Christianity and Judaism, but also the entire ascensional 
movement of man in search after God, is the imposing 
movement of the same inmost force, the ever-living and 
ever-acting impulse of religious growth ? In this point 
of view, J esus, the Son of the human race drawn upwards 
of God, has clearly and emphatically pronounced the 
word which conscience had before him whispered faintly 
and inarticulately, and by uttering it aloud he has made 
a similar utterance easy for all. Such were the doubts, 
the discoveries, the ideas which grew up in the soul of 
Theodore Parker during his sojourn in the university. 
Already, in concert with some friends, he prepared for 
The Scriptural Interpreter articles on the Old Testament 
in which you could discern the influence which German 
critics began to exercise over serious and independent 
minds. Thus, for example, these new lights demonstrated 
that the passage in Isaiah, lii. 13 — liii., was not a predic- 
tion of the person and death of J esus, but an ideal de- 
scription of the just man, the servant of Jehovah, such as 
he was during the captivity in Babylonia. In general 



RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 



29 



they made it clear that the prophecies in the Old Testa- 
ment referred to Jesus, lacked all validity, considered as 
miraculous predictions. In the ranks of the old Unitarians 
this called forth a cry of surprise, which soon deepened 
into terror. They asked not, " Are these young men 
right or wrong?" but, " ^hat will become of us?" 
Vhat will be left if they go on in this way ? " 
Such appeals could not daunt those hardy investi- 
gators. However, Parker had not yet systematized his 
theological ideas. !Manv things remained with him in a 
chaotic state. For instance, as to the supernatural, he 
had not yet, as he tells us, the idea of God which he 
entertained later on, and which, once acquired, made a 
real miracle as impossible in his judgment as a triangular 
circle. Nevertheless from this time his belief in the 
Biblical miracles went on decreasing. Indeed the more 
he held the pages of the Bible over the torch of a free 
criticism, the more he became convinced that not a single 
miracle was so attested as to demand that men should 
subordinate their daily experience to its authority — an 
authority only such as could belong to a writer per- 
haps inexact, perhaps ill-informed, perhaps deluded by 
his own enthusiasm. Full of admiration for the heroic- 
virtues and the incomparable moral beauty of the Christ, 
he declared that to assign them to an extra-human birth 
and nature as their cause, was to take from them all their 
value. The miraculous birth of Jesus is doubtless con- 
tained in two of the Gospels. But the other two, as well 
as the rest of the New Testament, know nothing of it, 
and the Gospels themselves which report it contain other 
particulars by which it is contradicted. Then a grand 
idea took possession of Parker's mind ever more and 
more, namely, that of the absolute perfection of God, and 
this idea became with him a touchstone by which to try re- 
ligious doctrines. Finally, plunging to the bottom of that 



30 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



tumultuous sea of opinions of all kinds which dash against 
and destroy each other, his judicious and practical spirit 
sought for the solid and permanent ground on which to 
cast anchor, and found it in this, that there is nothing 
better for any one, that there cannot be a more imperative 
obligation, than to obey the law of one's nature, that is, 
in the case of man, the law of our spiritual nature. To 
be good and to do good from faith in the Heavenly Father 
is the Christian sentiment properly so called; there is 
nothing superior to that either on earth or in heaven, 
and this is the ultimate foundation on which to build. 
Accordingly this was the basis which Parker deliberately 
chose. # 

Meanwhile the years of his theological noviciate drew 
near their termination. He shortly preached as a candi- 
date for the ministry, and became known in several 
places, waiting until a vacant pulpit placed him in a 

* We must not think that the religious sentiment with Parker was 
enfeebled by his free and persevering investigations. We shall have more 
occasions than one to observe that his originality and power were charac- 
terized by a union of mysticism and rationalism, both apprehended on 
their legitimate side. It is in 1836 that he composed these fine lines : 

" Jesus ! there is no dearer name than tbine, 

Which time has blazon' d on his mighty scroll; 
No wreaths nor garlands ever did entwine 

So fair a temple of so vast & soul. 
There every virtue set his triumph-seal ; 

Wisdom conjoin' d with strength and radiant grace, 
In a sweet copy heaven to reveal, 

And stamp perfection on a mortal face. 
Once on the earth wert thou, before men's eyes, 

That did not half thy beauteous brightness see ; 
E'en as the emmet does not read the skies, 

Nor our weak orbs look through immensity,— 
Once on the earth wert thou, a living shrine, 
Wherein conjoining dwelt the good, the lovely, the divine." 



RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 



31 



settled position. This occurred in 1S36. He divided his 
time between itinerant preachings, which procured him 
repute, and theological labours carried on with ardour. 
Then it is that he formed the design of putting out a 
translation of De Wette's Introduction to the Old Testa- 
ment; at that time the best work of the kind. With the 
candour of a young man who believes that every one is, 
as much as himself, disposed to turn toward the light, he 
anticipated much good from the progress of really sound 
theology. He specially desired by that means to destroy 
in well-informed minds that bibliolatry which held so 
many under its sway. He was afterwards compelled to 
admit that he had been much misled in his calculations. 
In that hope however he gave himself, with characteristic 
eagerness, to the labour of translation, enriching the 
work with a mass of notes collected by himself, and some- 
times correcting the original. About the same time he had 
the pain of losing his aged father. The gentle and pious 
companion of the venerable man had gone to the tomb a 
few years before. The memory of the two remained em- 
balmed in the noble heart of their son. Traces of the 
reverent affection often appear in his religious discourses. 
In 1837, the small Unitarian Church of West Eoxbury, 
lying a small distance from Boston, chose Parker for their 
minister. The community consisted of some 60 families, 
for the most part living in moderate ease ; some were rich 
and well educated. The pastoral duties were not absorb- 
ing. The country was fine. The cure, of a charming 
simplicity, was buried in verdure, and according to a 
custom not unknown in Protestant districts, the minister 
had free access into the gardens of the neighbourhood. 
His taste for meditation in the open fields or in the midst 
of flowers, which he loved passionately, found there full 
satisfaction. He could easily go thence to Boston, and 



32 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



profit there by the last words of Dr Channing, whose 
house he frequented. His people listened with pleasure 
to his sermons, full of originality, poetry, and applications 
to their simple and decent mode of life. In this fragrant 
retreat he established himself with his dear Lydia, now 
become his life-companion. 



33 



CHAPTER III. 

EELIGIOUS CEISIS. 

Parker's religious teachings — A storm arises — Heresies of the Unitarian 
minister — An incendiary Sermon — Parker black-balled — A model 
deacon — The Boston Resolution — Conferences — Of religion in general 
— God — Immortality — Jesus Christ — The Bible— Churches — Xecessary 
truth. 

TVe here transcribe a portion of a letter addressed by 
Theodore Parker, on the 10th of August, 1838, to one of 
his friends, Mr "W. Silsbee. The reader will find in it a 
statement, traced by Parker himself, of his method as a 
preacher, and of the religious views at which he had ar- 
rived. 

" You ask me what effect my speculations have on my practice. 
You wiU acquit me of boasting when I say, the most delightful — 
better than I could hope. My preaching is weak enough, you know, 
but it is made ten times the more spiritual and strong by my views 
of nature, God, Christ, man, and the Sacred Scriptures. In my re- 
ligious conversation I tell men religion is as necessary as bread to 
the body, light to the eye, thought to the mind. I ask them to look 
into their hearts, and see if it is not so. They say I tell them the 
doctrine of common sense, and it is true. Questions are often asked 
on the heretical points. I tell men that Moses and the writers of 
the Old Testament had low views of God, but the best that men 
could have in those times. They understand it, and believe the New 
Testament account of God. In regard to Christ, they see a beauty 
in his character when they look upon him as a man who had wants 
like theirs, trial, temptation, joys and sorrows like their own, yet 
stood higher than the tempter, and overcame in every trial. They see 
the same elements in themselves. I dwell mainly on a few great 
points, viz., the nobleness of man's nature, the lofty ideal he should 
set before him, the degradation of men at this time, their low aims 

3 



34 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



and worthless pleasures ; on the necessity of being true to their con- 
victions, whatever they may be, with the certainty that if they do 
this, they have the whole omnipotence of God working for them, as 
the artist brings the whole power of the river to turn his wheel. Also 
I dwell on the character and providence of God, and the exactness 
and beauty of his laws, natural, moral, and religious. My confidence 
in the Bible is increased. It is not a sealed book, but an open one. 
I consider there are three witnesses of God in creation. 1. Works of 
nature ; these do not perfectly reveal him, for we cannot now under- 
stand all its contradictions. 2. The words of our fellow-men; this 
confirms all the wisdom of all the past; it includes the Sacred Scrip- 
tures. Parts of it differ vastly in degree from other writings but not 
in kind. 3. The infinite sentiments of each individual soul. Now, 
I lay stress on the first, but more on the second, and still more on 
the third ; for a man may have just as bright revelations in his own 
heart as Moses, or David, or Paul; I might say as Jesus, but I do 
not think any man ever has had such a perfect God-consciousness as 
he. Men no more understand his words than they can do his mira- 
cles. " Be perfect as God," do they know what this means ? No, 
no. My confidence in the gospel is immeasurably increased. I see 
it has meaning in its plainest figures. " He that is greatest among 
you shall be your servant," — what meaning I It will be understood 
1000 years hence, not before. But I see the gospel is human, but 
almost infinitely above present humanity. I feel bound to com- 
municate my views just so fast and so far as men can understand 
them, — no farther. If they do not understand them when I propound 
them, the fault, I think, is mine and not theirs. I often find it 
difficult to make myself understood." * 

Parker's early days at "West Roxbury were perfectly 
calm. His ideas, though new and bold, were gladly re- 
ceived ; his charming character and his serious disposition 
gained him all hearts. Gradually however this idyl gave 
place to a drama. It may indeed be doubted whether 
Parker could have been long satisfied with so peaceful a 
manner of life. His need of activity, the consciousness he 
had of his abilities and of the good he was able to achieve 
for his country, the feeling that to produce a religious 
reformation you must labour in the centre of men enlight- 
ened and prepared by their moral wants for such a work, 
— all conspired to raise in him a desire to exercise his 

* Parker's Life and Correspondence, by Weiss, vol. i. pp. 110, 111. 



RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 



35 



powers on a theatre more spacious than that of TTest Kox- 
bury. You may even trace in his Journal some signs of 
dejection, of melancholy evidently engendered by the 
monotony and relative inconsiderableness of the life which 
passed under his eyes. But soon a storm arose in that 
calm atmosphere. 

For two years he had had in the drawer of his study 
table two sermons touching contradictions which exist in 
the Bible. Only after having consulted friends and per- 
sons of experience, who for the most part, it must be said, 
would rather he left them where they were, did he resolve 
to preach those compositions. To his great surprise and 
to his great joy he found that his hearers were no way 
shocked, even those who did not completely sympathize 
with him. It sometimes happens to preachers, led by 
faith in timid conservatives whom they consult, to repre- 
sent to themselves the mass of people as more distant 
than they really are from liberal principles. Great how- 
ever was the noise occasioned among the Biblical Unita- 
rians. Besides, Parker frequently spoke of his hope that 
the future would see other Christs arise, superior to him 
whom we owe to the past. I suspect that in this matter 
his utterance was more paradoxical than his thought. 
What he meant to express was his faith in the future 
progress of the human race, and he spoke as if he had 
been jealous of the perfection which the past might be- 
queath to the future. Perhaps with more reflection he 
would have avoided the infelicitous manner of formulating 
a truth which certainly would not be denied by him who 
said : " Yerily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth 
on me, the works that I do shall he do also ; and greater 
works than these shall he do, because I go unto my 
Father," John xiv. 12. There are in the field of genius, 
and specially of religious inspiration, grandeurs which 
cannot be measured, and which consequently defy com- 

3 * 



36 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



petition. Let us also ask if man has not a determined 
career to run in his history here below, and if in virtue 
of laws presiding in his inmost nature, certain individual 
grandeurs must remain without rival, whatever progress 
may be accomplished by the mass. But this manner of 
viewing a question, in itself purely speculative and with- 
out actual consequences, made a great number of Parker's 
co-religionists start back in alarm, and it began to be the 
fashion in the aristocratic circles of Boston to pronounce 
judgments perfidiously pitying " the poor infidel " of West 
Eoxbury. 

There were other complaints. Parker sent forth the 
doctrine that the divinity of Christianity reposes entirely 
on its moral and religious value, and that the proof drawn 
from miracles is radically powerless. On every side the 
advocates of miracle manifested hostility to those two po- 
sitions with a kind of concentrated anger, aware that 
miracles, which prove nothing, are useless, and that use- 
less miracles are speedily eliminated from consciousness 
and history. Parker published an excellent critique on 
the famous book of Strauss, The Life of Christ, pointing 
out with equal impartiality and penetration its good 
qualities and its defects, but hardly any one around him 
understood what the German critic had undertaken or 
accomplished, so that Parker obtained no credit for the 
superiority of his point of view, or the moderation with 
which he set it forth. In other articles he had sown 
German ideas on philosophy, the immanence of God in 
the world and in history, the mythical elements of the 
Bible. These ideas caused him to be ranked with Pan- 
theists and Spinosaists, by persons who had not even a tinge 
of the special studies necessary for an enlightened appre- 
ciation of such questions. A number of his brother min- 
isters declared that they would not admit him into their 
pulpits. American Unitarianism, like so many other 



RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 



37 



religious and political parties reduced to impotence, 
dared not follow out to the end the principle of free faith 
which constitutes its vitality. After having suffered so 
much from the disdain, the ignorance, and the narrowness 
of the less enlightened Churches of tradition, now that it 
had acquired for itself a large and open field, and had to 
some extent extorted respect and consideration from the 
other sects, instead of working for the development of its 
liberal principles, the Unitarian Church of the United 
States condescended to borrow from its rivals the rusty 
arms of their intolerance, and aimed not so much at re- 
futing Parker as gagging him ; fancying that thus it would 
maintain peace, while it saw not that it was only silence 
it gained, and that questions once mooted must and will 
be debated until they are resolved. ^Moreover, in the 
Protestant Church, especially in America, to desire silence 
is not necessarily to secure it. The mere fact of the ex- 
clusive proceedings taken against Parker drew on him, 
and the doctrinal points he had raised, the attention of 
many who, but for that, would have thought neither of 
the man nor his theology. The spark was put to the 
powder by a sermon preached at Boston on the 13th of 
May, 1841. It took place at the ordination of a young 
minister. To Parker was assigned the office of addressing 
the neophyte. He availed himself of the occasion to 
unfold his views on Christianity, especially distinguishing 
its transient elements from its permanent ones. # Under 
the former head he arranged many things which traditional 
theology considered as the very columns of the temple, 
and notwithstanding the care he took not so much to 
attack directly the beliefs which he no longer held, as to 
show that they were unimportant in regard to a real and 
positive piety, he yet called forth alarm and hostility, and 

* See the extract at the end of the volume, under the title " The 
Transient and Permanent in Christianity." 



38 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



soon came to be looked on as one of the most dangerous 
revolutionists. A violent controversy ensued, in which 
Parker, almost left alone, had to bear up against a crowd 
of attacks and imputations, which came from all parts of 
the horizon. Tet in all the vigour of his youth, with a 
clear sense that what he had done was morally right, re- 
volted at the refusal of what he thought justice, and at 
calumnies and disregard of truth from old associates ; 
moreover naturally inclined to take revenge by irony and 
sarcasm, Parker did not preserve in the conflict the calm 
and the moderation always to Le desired. It must also be 
said that moderation, everywhere too rare, is not exactly 
an American virtue, when political or religious questions 
are under discussion. After all, let us own that religious 
reforms are not to be achieved by compliments. There 
are moments when you are obliged to tell Pharisees that 
they are Pharisees, and to cast into the flames the bulls 
which send you to burn everlastingly in hell. 

"We shall not enter into the details, now devoid of 
interest, of a controversy which for months occupied the 
daily and periodical press of Massachusetts, to say no- 
thing of numberless minor publications in which heated 
partisans rushed forwards as if to expose their ignorance 
of the questions at issue. A sort of moral terrorism was 
organized against Parker, to which the timiditv of some 

DO 7 J 

contributed quite as much as the passions of others. Ere 
long all the Unitarian pulpits, except some half-score, 
w r ere closed against Parker, throughout the whole of New 
England. His hearers at West Eoxbury, who had at- 
tended on his public services for four years, and had 
readily grown habituated to heresies (as they were called) 
in which they found moral and religious aid and profit, 
remained quite faithful, in spite of all the attempts made 
to alienate them from their pastor. Specially were they 
pleased with his frankness. We cite by way of proof, the 



RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 



39 



reflections of one of his deacons, named Farrington, an 
excellent man, the like of whom we would gladly see in- 
crease. 

' ; ]Mr Parker makes a distinction between religion and 
theology ; it is a sound distinction. TTe like his religion ; 
it is exactly what we want ; we understand it ; and this 
religion is the principal thing. About the theology we 
are not quite so clear ; much of it is different from what 
we used to learn. But we were taught many foolish 
things. Some of his theology we are sure is right ; all of 
it seems like good common sense ; and if some of it does 
seem a little strange, we are contented to have him preach 
just what he thinks ; for, if he began by not preaching 
what he believed, I am afraid he would end by preaching 
at last what he did not believe."* This "wise old 
deacon," as he was called by his minister, from whom 
that minister confessed to have " learned a great many 
things," may be considered as the organ of the middle 
direction of opinion in the little community. The pro- 
portions which the struggle had taken naturally aug- 
mented Parker's desire to labour in the reformatory work 
he had undertaken, in a more ample field. The friends 
of progress in Boston who were not affrighted by the 
crusade preached against a theologian more laborious than 
others, whose sole crime was that he had frankly put his 
religious teaching into harmony with his knowledge and 
his conscience, were not disposed to allow that courageous 
voice to be extinguished. They held a meeting for de- 
liberation, and unanimously adopted this motion : 

" Eesolved : that the Rev. Theodore Parker he heard at 
Boston:' 

Parker gave a favourable answer to this call, which 
opened to him the intellectual and commercial capital of 



* "Weiss, vol. ii. 305. 



40 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



New England. He went, and was received with sympathy 
such as surpassed his expectation. Is ever with impunity 
does the obscurantist spirit succeed in getting the upper 
hand in a Protestant community. The Churches, which 
may be traced back to the Reformation, have doubtless 
their narrownesses, their times of exhaustion or stagnation, 
but their origin cannot be forgotten by all their members, 
and the feeling that the ground and justification of their 
existence is freedom of religious life and teaching, always 
succeeds in the end in asserting its legitimate rights. The 
lectures delivered in Boston in the winter of 1841-1842 
were published by their author in a volume entitled a 
"Discourse on Matters pertaining to Eeligion." There 
you may find a complete exposition of his theological 
ideas. We shall endeavour to give a brief summary of 
them in analyzing that remarkable work.* 

Book I. On religion in general. All human in- 
stitutions have sprung from a principle inherent in human 
nature. There is nothing in society but what exists in 
man. Eeligion is no exception. It is as unreasonable to 
ascribe it to the artifices of priests and princes, though 
beyond a doubt they have made ill use of it, as to take 
the tricks and artifices of tradesmen for the source of 
commerce. There is then a religious principle in man's 
nature. To this natural religious principle, which, closely 
considered, has for its essence the recognition of a perfect 
infinite Being on whom we depend, an adequate object 

* The first edition has for its date 1842. Except that Parker after- 
wards declared positively against the authenticity of the fourth Gospel, 
his ideas remained essentially the same to the last. You may judge how 
truly his was an advanced theology by the fact that nearly a quarter of a 
century since the young theologian of iSTew England professed opinions 
the recent appearance of which in France was regarded as an unheard-of 
novelty, and which to-day are only beginning to make for themselves ao 
opening into the most intelligent circles of the Old World. 



RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 



41 



must correspond. Here is the reason why man believes 
in God by a spontaneous intuition of his reasonable 
nature. The arguments ordinarily alleged to prove the 
existence of God may confirm, but cannot beget this in- 
tuition of faith. As to the determinate conception which 
we form of God, it is necessarily inferior to the reality, the 
finite not being able to comprehend the infinite. Hence at 
once the permanence and the universality of the intuitive 
idea of God throughout history, as well as the innumerable 
variations in the conception which men have had of God. 
The frightful abuses which man has so often committed 
in the name of religion, prove the depth and power of 
that instinctive tendency of human nature, much more 
than they make against it. ~We must not confound reli- 
gion, which is a fact, with theology, which is the science 
or explanation of that fact, any more than we must con- 
found the stars with astronomy. Religion has three great 
historical forms : feticism, polytheism, monotheism. The 
first is the worship of visible objects. It is the immediate 
worship of nature, or rather of certain natural phenomena 
which awaken in the human mind the sense of mystery, 
or of fear, or of gratitude, &c. It tends to generalize the 
objects of adoration, until it has made a divinity out of 
each of the great divisions of visible nature, the heaven, 
the earth, the sea. This form of religion possesses little 
moral value, if indeed it has any. Polytheism consists in 
the adoration of many divinities, produced by the per- 
sonification of the material and moral forces of the world 
— the former always yielding more territory to the latter. 
Notice the opulence of its forms and symbols, its powerful 
charm, especially in Greece, and its tendency, more or 
less unconscious, toward either pantheism or monotheism. 
Under its shadow arises a priesthood with its relative 
advantages and abuses. War is the normal state of nature 
and of the human race, as of the divinities one among the 



42 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



other. Slavery in its origin is a step in advance of war 
without quarter, and with slavery begins labour, produc- 
tion, involving superfluity, and then commerce. Religion 
and the state are one, whether the unity is founded on a 
theocracy or not. Polytheism now arrests, now advances, 
moral development. It is defective principally in respect 
of interior and domestic morality, as well as in universal 
or humanitarian. It inspires very little higher than civic 
virtues. 

With monotheism appear the grand ideas of human- 
kind, equal rights for all, liberty, and an absolute moral 
ideal. For God only is perfect in wisdom, in love, in 
will. But here also, indeed here above all, we must re- 
vert to the distinction already drawn between the identity 
of the monotheistic idea through the ages, and the numer- 
ous conceptions, so often inferior and even gross, that man 
forms of the Deity. The primitive monotheism of the 
Hebrews is still very incomplete, and no way excludes 
the existence of other gods besides J ehovah. When Je- 
hovah came to be regarded as the only true God, the 
character ascribed to him was at first very far from per- 
fection. The Old Testament sets him forth in features 
often little spiritual and venerable. But from Moses to 
Christ the line of monotheism, always more and more 
elevated, is prolonged until it reaches the grand and 
touching conception of " Our Father, who art in heaven." 

Certain questions closely connected with religion ask 
for study. Among others we mention the primeval con- 
dition of the human race, and immortality. As to the 
former, everything concurs to prove that men, whether 
descended from a single pair or not (the solution of this 
obscure question in no way changes the moral unity of 
mankind), began their earthly career in a condition little 
above animalism. The stories of Eden, of the golden age, 
and others of a similar kind, are explained by man's tend- 



RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 



43 



encv to idealize the past, and correspond to nothing real. 
The kingdom of God is not behind this age or that, bnt 
always before. 

The doctrine of immortality is nearly as general as 
faith in God, and, like it, arises from man's tendency to- 
ward the infinite. Here too, as in speaking of faith in 
God, we must distinguish clearly between the idea and 
the conception of the life to come. The latter, no less 
than the arguments adduced to prove it, may be very de- 
fective. Faith in immortality, at first very vague and 

► 7 JO 

sometimes even indirectly denied in several places of the 
Old Testament, continually gains strength, and becomes 
more precise from age to age, especially after the era of 
the captivity in Babylon. Marks of a similar evolution 
may be traced among other nations. "Were the doctrine 
of the Church true, which devotes to damnation the great 
mass of mankind, the gift of immortality conferred on our 
race by its Creator would be a curse much more than a 
blessing. 

Keligion, according as it turns into superstition, into 
fanaticism, or into real piety and the love of God, is either 
the most formidable of the powers which direct the course 
of human things, or the grandest, the most salutary, and 
the most delightful of the Divine benefactions.* 

Book II. Relation of the religious sextimext with 
God. An infinitely perfect God is what the religious senti- 
ment requires. If in declaring that God is personal, you 
mean that he is superior to the limitations of unconscious 
beings ; if in declaring that he is impersonal you mean 
that he is superior to the limitations of our personality, 
you are right. But if in using these two terms you in- 
tend to refer to him the limitations of personality, or 
those of unconsciousness, you are wrong. As God is in- 

* See the piece translated at the end of the volume under the title of 
" Religious Joy." 



44 LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 

finite perfection, he mnst possess omnipotence, omnipre- 
sence (immanence), justice, love, holiness. All nature 
then is a revelation of The Being who pervades and go- 
verns all things. The forces of nature are his laws or 
modes of action. Hence the uniformity and stability of 
the laws of nature. 

But God is in man not less than in nature, and just 
as to every want of each living being God provides in 
nature an object by which it is satisfied, so he furnishes a 
natural satisfaction to our religious want. This satisfac- 
tion lies in the soul's communion with God by means of 
the religious sentiment, and in that communion arise the 
phenomena of inspiration. This point of view puts away 
not only that naturalistic deism which, separating God 
from the world, does not admit of any actual relation be- 
tween God and man, and reduces religion to a form, useful 
it may be, but empty and cold ; but also supernaturalism, 
which allows no revelation from God to man except by 
means of miracle. The true conception, that of spiritual- 
ism, recognizes the permanent action of God on and in 
the human soul — an action in virtue of which the soul 
directly and intuitively perceives rational and moral 
verities. But inspiration, supposing the co-action of the 
inspired soul, differs according to races and individuals, 
both of which may be more or less richly endowed, and 
employ with greater or less energy the faculties they have 
severally received. The essential condition of inspiration 
is that man purely observes the law of his spiritual being. 
The best man, the wisest, the most religious, is also the 
most inspired. It is a fault of his religion, or from lack 
of reflection, that a person thinks himself so remote from 
God as to need for the resting-place of his faith and hope 
the authority of either a book or a Church. 

Book III. Kelation of the religious sentiment 
with Christianity. Is Christianity the absolute reli- 



RELIGIOUS CRISIS, 



45 



gion, that is. the perfect love of God and man, manifested 
in a life, in which all the hnman faculties are harmoniously 
developed ? To answer this question we must recur to 
the teachings of Jesus himself. So doing, we find our- 
selves consulting the Gospels. Xow the Gospels in no 
way pretend to that miraculous inspiration which tradi- 
tion claims in their behalf. Moreover, did they make any 
such pretension they would be in the wrong, for. in fact, 
they frequently contradict themselves. Nevertheless, and 
in spite of what is legendary and mythical in their nar- 
ratives, it must be admitted that a sublime fact, that is. a 
divine life, a circle of instruction the most elevated, is 
the fountain-head of the traditional current which they 
have collected and still present to the world. Let us 
leave on one side the fourth Gospel, which is historical 
neither in itself nor in the intention of its author. Thanks 
to the synoptical Gospels, that is, the three first, which 
are so called because they all contain many passages in 
common, and which may be placed side by side with each 
other, so as in the main to present one and the same view 
of the Lord's history; owing to this remarkable fact, and 
notwithstanding certain variations and divergences as 
between the accounts when compared together, we are 
able to reproduce the doctrine taught by Jesus, a doctrine 
which he confirmed, illustrated, and enhanced by his sub- 
lime life, a life the essence of which was a faithful and 
perfect obedience, in the love of God and the love of man, 
considered as our highest law and our supreme Good. 
Nevertheless, alongside of an incomparable sentiment of 
divine perfection, we meet with words which imply an 
eternal hell, the personal existence of the devil, the ap- 
proaching end of the world to take place at the return of 
the Messiah, borne in triumph on the clouds of heaven. 
Perhaps we may also be justified in imputing to Jesus 
certain faults, very excusable indeed, but still certain 



46 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



faults. Not the less is it true that the principle of the 
everlasting religion was proclaimed by him, and received 
in his life magnificent realization. The religion of the 
spirit, superior to rites, to priests, to dogmas, made its 
appearance on earth with him, by him, in him. We must 
not rest the authority of Christ's doctrine on miracles, 
which are either impossible or attested very insufficiently. 
The miracles of Saint Bernard would be more admissible 
than those of Christ were we to decide solely by weighing 
testimonies. Moreover, if you say that the doctrine 
proves the miracles, you thereby proclaim their inutility. 
The authority of that doctrine reposes altogether on its 
truth. 

The excellence of the doctrine taught by Jesus is 
specially apparent in that it fully authorizes man to ad- 
vance indefinitely beyond the point where he himself 
stopped. All that agrees with reason, with conscience, with 
our religious sentiment, is essentially Christian. The re- 
ligion of Christ is then a religion of libert} r , of continual 
development, of the ceaseless pursuit after what is better 
and what is perfect. Another of his superiorities is, that 
he sets before us not a system but a method of life, that 
is, obedience to the law written of God on the tablets of 
our hearts. Still further, his religion is eminently prac- 
tical, and sets no value on dogmatical confessions or 
ritual observances, but makes all depend on a loving and 
holy life. It is a religion of man's every-day existence, 
of the domestic hearth, of the exchange, of rural solitude, 
of civic stir, of public enterprise and movement. It 
knows nothing of vicarious righteousness, and if it shows 
us a brother praying by our side, it ignores that attorney 
or substitute, pleading with God on our behalf, as well as 
that guiltless victim which expiates sins he has not com- 
mitted ; both of which are characters invented by the 
traditional theology. 



RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 



47 



As far as we are able to restore the portrait of Jesus, 
after all allowance for inevitable limitations and imper- 
fections, we are compelled to bow before him as before 
the grandest soul that ever appeared on earth. The 
evangelical doctrine ascending from the borders of the 
lake of Galilee to J erusalem, to Antioch, to Ephesus, to 
Athens, to Corinth, to Rome, triumphed over all its ene- 
mies. But, alas ! it was not without loss to its divine 
purity, that it came into contact with Judaism, paganism, 
and statescraft. But being everlasting in its principle, it 
will, in its continual applications, throw off errors found 
even in Jesus himself, by whom it was proclaimed, and 
from whom it received life and power. 

Book IV. Belatiox of the religious sextimext 
with the Bible. The immense and beneficent results 
of the diffusion of the Bible in the world must have had 
a proportionate cause. But we must not look for it any- 
where else than in the sublimity of the teachings which 
the Bible contains, and this does not take from us the 
right to acknowledge and repel the contradictory, absurd, 
or immoral elements which it also contains. As that of 
Christianity in general, the authority of the Bible is no 
other than that of the truth it presents, and which justifies 
itself before the tribunal of the human conscience. If the 
Bible does disappear before the breath of criticism, the 
reason is that it ought to disappear. But disappear it 
will not, and that on account and in the degree of the 
truth that is in it.* 

Book V. Eelatiox of the religious sextimext with 
the Church. Jesus did not found a Church. But his 
religion, like every religion, brought together those who 
possessed it, and common sympathy toward his person 
singularly tightened the bonds of that religious associa- 

* In order to complete the analysis of this part of the work, refer to 
what is said, p. 24, et scq. 



48 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



tion. In the beginning liberty sat as a queen in the 
Christian assemblies. By little and little, the episcopal 
hierarchy engrafted itself on the republican and demo- 
cratic organization of the primitive days. With Paul, 
who endeavours to emancipate Christianity from Jewish 
forms, a definite form of necessary dogmas is introduced. 
By degrees servitude, whether in regard to the priest, or 
in regard to the doctrine formulated by the priest, be- 
comes the rule of the Church. Thence the spiritual and 
temporal horrors of the Church of the Middle Ages,, as 
well as the legitimacy of the Reformation. The Reform- 
ation broke in pieces irreparably the external unity of the 
Church. Catholicism owes the truth and the force it has 
to its recognizing the continuity of the revealing and re- 
deeming action of God among men ; but its error and its 
feebleness proceed from its pretending to include that 
divine action within the circle of its clergy and its creeds 
and ritual; hence its intolerance, its tyranny, its dread of 
free inquiry, nor less the backward condition of the popu- 
lations that are under its rule. The merit of Protest- 
antism lies in having broken that intolerable yoke, and 
replaced the individual in the position in which Jesus 
would have him be : that is, in the immediate presence of 
God. Its demerit consists in desiring to enclose all 
truth, all inspiration, within the Bible, and as the Bible 
lies open to several interpretations, in drawing up and 
imposing forms of religious opinion. Thence the divisions 
in Protestantism. Its diverse branches, from Calvinism 
the most sombre to Unitarianism the most large, have all 
their good qualities and their bad. All are too narrow, 
too much slaves of the letter of the Bible. Criticism 
will deliver us from this servitude. The future belongs 
to spiritualism, which proposes for its supreme object the 
identity of the will of man with the will of God, and 
which subordinates all, — Churches, forms of worship, 



RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 



49 



varieties of religion, — to the great tiling, the only neces- 
sary one, the sole religion which can be considered ever- 
lasting — the love of God and the love of man. 

TTe owed to our readers this condensed analysis of 
the exposition, so full of movement, which Parker gave of 
his doctrines to his Boston auditory. How often have we 
been tempted to substitute for our dry summary a con- 
tinuous translation. It was impossible to indicate as we 
went along, the authors referred to in the notes, the in- 
credible number of which shows how much in earnest 
with his subject Parker was, though branded as a heretic, 
and how much he was bent on learning the truth before 
he attempted to teach it to others. I do not propose at 
this moment to pass his religious views in formal review. 
If I may express an opinion, I should say that on certain 
points, e. g. the genesis of mythologies, the personal cha- 
racter of Christ, what may be strictly called his doctrine 
(that is, his doctrine in its original purity), in general the 
somewhat too hostile way in which the Church of the 
past is regarded, I am unable entirely to agree with the 
eminent orator. With these reservations, I do not con- 
ceal my ardent sympathy for that assemblage of fine and 
generous doctrines. Theodore Parker is one of the noble 
army of God which, each in his age, has fought the good 
fight of piety united with freedom. The errors that are 
mingled with his grand and noble views will pass away. 
But the truth, the eternal splendour of which he has 
endeavoured to show to all, that truth which the ardent 
and pure love of the perfection which is in God, and is 
destined to be in man, is that which is most beauteous 
and most needful in heaven and on earth, and that truth 
will not perish, and no one can deny to Parker the glory 
of having been one of its most powerful preachers. 



4 



50 



CHAPTEE IV. 

VISIT TO EUROPE. 

Death of Charming — Association of Unitarian ministers — Religious ex- 
clusiveness in America — The health of Parker suffers — Departure for 
Europe — France — Florence — Rome — Venice — Prague — Berlin — 
Heidelberg — Wittenberg — Tubingen — A vocation. 

It will easily be conceived that, if the complete exposi- 
tion of his religious views gained Parker adherents in the 
bosom of the society of Boston, it only vexed his ad- 
versaries and added to their number. The venerable 
Channing, a little surprised by the irruption of new views 
which surpassed his own, but too thoroughly liberal to 
enrol himself in the party of compression, died shortly 
after Parker published his Boston lectures (in the autumn 
of 1842). Parker felt the loss severely. Perhaps Chan- 
ning only could have uttered a conciliatory voice which 
would have been heeded in the midst of the theological 
excitement. It was proposed to expel the West Roxbury 
pastor from the association of Unitarian ministers of 
Boston, and in a sitting at which he was present, he had 
during several hours to repel accusations, evidently put 
forward to compel his retirement. Nevertheless, some 
members manifested sympathy toward his position and 
character. This brotherly act melted him, and he burst 
into tears. The following he wrote some days after to 
one of his friends (Eev. C. Bobbins) who was present at 
the meeting : 



VISIT TO EUROPE, 



51 



" You mistake a little the cause of my tears the other night. It 
was not a hard thing said by yourself or others. All might have 
said such as long as they liked ; I would not have winked at that. 
It was the kind things said by Bartol and Gannett, and what I knew 
by your face you were about to say : it was this that made me weep. 
I could meet argument with argument (in a place where it is in order 
to discuss ' the subjects ' of a theological book which is talked of), 
blow with blow, ill-nature with good-nature, all night long ; but the 
moment a man takes my part, and says a word of sympathy, that 
moment I should become a woman and no man. If Pierpont had 
been present, I should have asked him, at the beginning, to say no 
word in defence of me, but as many of offence as he liked. I felt 
afraid, at first, that a kind thing might be said earlier in the evening, 
and am grateful to the 4 brethren ' that they said none such till late. 

" But to leave this painful theme. I knew always the risks that I 
ran in saying what was hostile to the popular theology. I have not 
forgotten George Fox, nor Priestley ; no, nor yet Abelard nor St 
Paul. Don't think I compare myself with these noble men, except 
in this, that each of them was called on to stand alone, and so am I. 
I know what Paul meant when he said, ; At my first answer no man 
stood with me ; ' but I know also what is meant when a greater than 
Paul said, 8 Yet I am not alone ; for the Father is with me.' 

" If my life ends to-morrow, I can say, — 

' I have the richest, best of consolations, 
The thought that I have given, 
To serve the cause of Heaven, 
The freshness of my early inspirations.' 

I care not what the result is to me personally. I am equal to either 
fate, and ask only a chance to do my duty. Xo doubt my life is to 
be outwardly a life of gloom and separation from old associates (I 
will not say friends). I know men will view me with suspicion, and 
ministers with hatred ; that is not my concern. Inwardly, my life 
is, and must be, one of profound peace — of satisfaction and comfort 
that all words of mine are powerless to represent. There is no mortal 
trouble that disturbs me more than a moment — no disappointment 
that makes me gloomy, or sad, or distrustful. All outward evil falls 
off me as snow from my cloak. I never thought of being so happy 
in this life as I have been these two years. The destructive part of 
the work I feel called on to do is painful, but is slight compared with 
the main work of building up. Don't think I am flattered, as some 
say, by seeing many come to listen. Nothing makes a real man so 
humble as to stand and speak to many men. The thought that I 
am doing what I know to be my duty is a rich reward to me ; I know 
of none so great. Besides that, however, I have the satisfaction of 
knowing that I have awakened the spirit of religion, of faith in God, 

4 * 



52 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



in some 20 or 25 men, who before that had no faith, no hope, no re- 
ligion. This alone, and the expression of their gratitude (made by- 
word of mouth, or made by letters, or by a friend), would compensate 
me for all that all the ministers in all the world could say against 
me or do against me. But why do I speak of this ? Only to show 
you that I am not likely to be cast down. Some of my relations, 
200 or 300 years ago, lost their heads for their religion. I am called 
to no such trial, and can well bear my lighter cross." 

All who, experiencing the need of sympathy in their 
daily life, have felt themselves placed in the alternative of 
losing that deep joy or of failing in duty, will understand 
what resignation there is in this determined language. 
Such firmness was necessary to him. From that hour, 
and during the years which followed his installation at 
Boston, he was exposed to an opposition which would 
have discouraged any but him. Charges, insults, threats, 
hatred from the majority excited by his denunciators, fell 
on him like an avalanche. Opprobrious words were ad- 
dressed to him in public by men who had vaunted them- 
selves on his friendship. Prayers were put up in public 
in many a pious gathering, asking that he might either be 
converted or punished from on high. People refused, in 
a way characteristic of American manners, to sit on the 
same sofa, at the same table, in the same omnibus as he. 
Pie was treated as a leper in the Church and in society. 
Por some time there was a veritable coalition against him 
on the part of the press, patronized by rich and influential 
coteries. Everywhere his writings were shunned. During 
several months no bookseller could be found in all the 
Union to print and publish his works. At last a Sweden- 
borgian printer of New York undertook the venture. 
jSTot only the University of Boston dared not open its 
ranks to him, in which doubtless he would have occupied 
one of the foremost places, but when he wished to take 
part in enterprises of Christian philanthropy, he was 



VISIT TO EUROPE. 



53 



obliged to do so by stealth, concealing himself as if for 
some bad action. 

Xothing extinguished his courage, and truly there is 
encouragement in beholding this man, who has only his 
conviction and his character wherewith to withstand all 
the forces of society leagued against him, and who at last 
succeeded in overcoming their hostility. Bound only by 
his conscience, above ail suspicion of personal interest, 
pledged to no political nor religious party, he was strong, 
it may be said, in that he was weak. He continued to 
carry on at the same time his pastoral duties and the 
most absorbing studies. He laboured on an average 15 
hours a day, keeping himself abreast of all the advances 
of Europe, on science. Criticism, exegesis, philology, 
philosophy, archaeology, comparative ethnology, statistics 
— everything knowable he resolved, as far as possible, to 
know and to communicate ; and much of the fruit of his 
laborious hours he did communicate to his fellow-citi- 
zens in language clear and impressive. Not long after 
his Boston Lectures he put out his translation of De 
TTette's Introduction to the Old Testament, enriched, as we 
know, with considerable notes and illustrations. From 
many quarters he began to receive invitations to deliver 
his thoughts in public. Once heard, he was generally en- 
treated to return that he might be heard again, and as he 
would not permit his people to suffer in consequence, he 
stole from the night the time necessary for discharging 
his undertakings by day. At last his health, which had 
already suffered from excess of labour in the University, 
proved to be seriously damaged, and his friends were 
unanimous in urging him to take a year's rest and to 
visit Europe. This would be a means for the restoration 
of his health and for augmenting the circle of his know- 
ledge. The year which he devoted to the visit was, as 



54 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



he himself said, the most profitable of his life. Europe 
interested him in the highest degree. In London he be- 
came acquainted with several persons distinguished in the 
sciences and in theology, among others, Professor New- 
man. Paris and Prance had their turn. The Prench 
character, manners, monuments, everything, even to the 
singular names of some streets, is noted down with sur- 
prising precision in his journal. The following is a sum- 
mary of the judgment he expressed on the subject, in a 
humorous letter written to a friend (Dr Prancis). 

" After all, there is a certain unity of character in the 
Prench which has its merit. They are always gay — gay 
in their business, gay in their religion ; their churches 
even have a style that is peculiarly Prench, at least since 
the time of Delorme all their architecture has been gay. 
The Frenchman would gladly dance before the Lord, like 
King David.'' 

At Paris he heard professors Damiron, Lenormant, and 
Jules Simon lecture. The last, still young, seemed to 
him, to use his own words, " the beau ideal of lecturing. I 
never heard or read a neater exposition of doctrines than 
his of Plato's notions of Grod, though I think them a little 
erroneous." His love of perspicuity made our best authors 
particularly dear to him. He profited greatly, he said, 
from " the brilliant Mosaic of Cousin." 

Passing into Italy he visited Genoa, Pisa, Plorence. 
Who would then have said that, 16 years after, he would 
breathe his last sigh in the city of the Medici ? 

Extracts from his journal : 

" Florence. — Santa Croce is the great burial-place of the illus- 
trious departed of Florence ; here sleep in peace the men that were 
persecuted when living, and driven from their native land. 

" The first time I visited this beautiful church it was a very sad 
day, and not knowing what to do, I turned into the home of the de- 
parted. While I copied the inscriptions the priests chanted their 
service, and ever and anon the organ poured out such music as might 



VISIT TO EUROPE. 



55 



have fallen from the sky : it was sad, sweet, and soothing to the 
soul. 

" It is a little curious that Galileo should be buried in tills church 
and have such a monument here, for the tribunal that persecuted 
him had its residence in this very cloister. So the world goes. The 
conventuals of St Francis, to whom Urban IY. entrusted the in- 
quisitorial power in Tuscany, met in the cloister of Santa Croce. 
Now the Grand Duke of Tuscany is curious to preserve every relic of 
Galileo, even his finger, kept in the Laurentian Library. 

" I have now visited most of the wonders of this charming place. 
Let me say that the great paintings of Raphael — the Madonna Delia 
Seggiola, the Julius II. , the Leo X.. the Fornarina, affect me more 
than I had ever dreamed of. The first time I went to the Pitti 
Palace. I did not know what I was to see : all at once my eye fell on 
the Madonna. What a painting ! God in heaven, what a painting ! 
What a genius ! I must say the same of the great work of Titian — 
the Magdalen, and both the Venuses ; but the Laocoon, the Yenus de 
Medici, and the Apollo did not fill my mind as I had expected. The 
statues in general have fallen a little below my imagination, the 
paintings (I mean the great ones, which I knew well by engravings 
before) have risen above it far; so have the public buildings." 

In this last remark we may recognize the friend of life 
and movement. Statuary is always more abstract, more 
impersonal than painting. This it is which forms its 
superiority in the eyes of its admirers. 

" Puteoli and Bat^e. Mem. The girl near the Cento 
Camarelle who spun in the ancient manner, the pretty 
girl whose teeth Mr Freeman looked at, and the beauty 
to whom I gave half a carline, and who knelt down that 
we might look at her necklace." 

Then he reached Eome : " the widow of two antiqui- 
ties." 

" Rome. — There is no city, except Athens and Jerusalem, so full 
of recollections to me as Rome. Twice it has been the capital of the 
world — once, of the Pagan, by physical violence ; once, of the Chris- 
tian, by spiritual violence. She has made a desert about her twice. 
The memorials of the arts, however, came from the times of the Em- 
perors, scarce any from that of the republic. 

" I love to walk about the streets, or sit in the Forum, and think 
of the armies that marched out of this little city — the influences that 
went forth to conquer the world. What traces of these stern giants 



56 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



are written all over the earth. One might, in travelling in the land 
of giants, come all at once on the footprints of one in the sand 10 
feet long — and from that judge of the race. So it is with the 
Romans, but you meet their footsteps everywhere. Yet they invented 
nothing, not even the arch. They borrowed their literature, their art, 
their religion, but their arms they made. But, alas, what a contrast, 
as one sits in the Forum, and looks on the crowd of beggars and of 
blackguards. Oh, city of crime from the days of Romulus till these 
days ! Thou that stonest the prophets ! The blood of martyrs is 
upon thee from thy earliest to thy latest days. 

" We went to Sta Maria Maggiore, which is exceedingly rich, 
but not imposing. It is not a religious architecture. It seems to 
me the modern Unitarians would like this style ; it is clear, actual, 
and the work of logical and demonstrative heads, wholly free from 
mysticism. 

" We went to the prison — the Mamertine Prison, where Jugurtha 
died, and the conspirators that were with Catiline. Yes, here was 
Paul a prisoner ! The custode shows a spring that spouted up for St 
Peter (who was here nine months with Paul), in which he baptized 
49 soldiers, all of whom became martyrs. There is a stone which 
records the same event. I drank some of the water. But all non- 
sense apart, it is something to sit down in the dungeon where Paul 
was a prisoner ! 

" Sunday, March 3.- — We were presented to the Pope, with some 
other Americans. He stood, in the simple dress of a monk, with his 
back against a sort of table, and talked with Mr Greene, who had 
introduced us. He blessed some rosaries which the Americans had 
brought. We stayed about 20 minutes. He has a benevolent face, 
and looked kindly upon us. Talked about the state of Rome — 
about the English language in America — about the famous polyglott 
Cardinal at the Propaganda — made a sign, and we withdrew." 

A fact occurs here which deserves notice. By no 
means does it stand alone. For a moment Parker was 
captivated by the studied manners and the refined polite- 
ness of the high dignitaries of the Church of Kome. He 
found them charming, almost seductive. Not that his re- 
ligious ideas and tendencies received the slightest shock, 
but you nevertheless see in his notes and in his earliest 
letters from Eome that he was inclined to indulgence, 
rare for him, toward the supporters of a system which in 
his eyes was very baneful. He was first disenchanted 
when a Soman whom he questioned touching the morality 



VISIT TO EUROPE. 



57 



of the native clergy, said : " One tenth of the priests con- 
sists of pure and conscientious men; as to the rest — " 
Instead of finishing, his informant shrugged his shoulders, 
adding, " AValls have ears." Even if the proportion in- 
dicated had taken a tinge from old grudges cherished by 
the Eoman people against their clerical rulers, such a 
statement must have amazed Parker, to whom a young 
American neophyte had just declared that the moral con- 
dition of the Eoman clergy was that of immaculate purity. 

w VraiCE. — I see the secret of the Venetian colouring here in the 
actual sky. oc<5an. houses, and men and women. I rose each morn- 
ing an hour or more before the sun, and watched that beautiful 
purple spread itself out in all directions from the point where the sun 
would rise, and then disappear in the dimmer light of day. The 
solemn stillness of the horseless city was broken only by the fisher- 
men going out to sea. their white sails against the purple. The 
numerous bells only announce the general silence. 

" Venice is a dream of the sea. Occidental science and Oriental 
fantasy seem to have united to produce it. A Pagan Greek might 
say that Neptune, drunk with nectar and Amphitrite. slept in the 
caves of the sea. and dreamed as he slept. Venice is the petrification 
of his dream. The sun colours curiously the walls of the palaces 
and churches. It seems as if their wealth had run over and stained 
the walls." 

' ; Prague. — A lad of 19 conducted me to the old Jewish Ceme- 
tery, a small enclosure of half or three-quarters of an acre, sur- 
rounded with old houses and old walls, full of dead men's graves. 
Stone touched stone. There were long inscriptions in Hebrew : the 
earth was full of Israelitish bones. Old trees, elders, grew there to 
an enormous size. They were the patriarchs of the place. Some of 
them were a foot thick. The guide said they were more than 600 
years old, and I can believe it. Here are the graves of famous Rabbis, 
of good Levites ; of nobles, also, for in this land the Jews sit down 
with princes. I never saw a Jewish grave-yard before, and this spot 
made me feel as never before. I have an inborn affection for this 
mysterious people, for ages oppressed, yet green and living still. I 
thought of the service they had done mankind — and the reward they 
got ! Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Moses and the Prophets, came up 
to my mind, and He who was the culmination of Hebrewdom, the 
blossom of the nation. I shall never forget my feelings as I also laid 
a stone piously on the tomb of a Patriarch who died 1000 years ago, 
and plucked an elder leaf from the tree that rooted among his 
mouldered ashes." 



53 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



" Berlin. — Heard Werder on Logic. He made a great fuss about 
Bestimmtheit, and was, as I thought, in a remarkable fix himself. 
When be wanted to touch upon anything very deep, he laid his fore- 
finger with its tip between his eyes on the organ of individuality, and 
then gradually drew it down the length of his nose. He goes down 
so deep, far below the nature of things, that one must take off not 
only his clothes, but his Sinnlichkeit — his memory, his common- 
sense, imagination, affections, and then he becomes a blosser Geist, 
and is prepared to go down to the deep, deep sea of Philosophy. 

" Mem. The pudding-faced youth who tried to comprehend the 
distinction between Daseyn, and Bealite, and could not. 

" Heard Schelling on OrTenbarungs-Philosophie. He found a good 
deal of fault with Kant, but praised Fichte, and said he had done 
great service to philosophy ; thought his 1 Naturrecht ' his best thing ; 
praised the ' Way towards a Blessed Life ' for its dialectic skill, com- 
pared it with Hegel 1 s works, which he said were merely mechanical, 
though he only alluded to Hegel and did not name him ; some hissed 
at the allusion. Then he added that in his (Hegel's) case the work 
was mere mechanism, the grinding in a mill, and men paid much 
more attention to the noise of the clapper than to the meal which 
was alleged to be ground. Upon this all laughed. 

" Schelling is about 70, short, five ft. six in. or less, looks mild, 
his nose is short and slightly turned up, hair white as snow, an 
ample forehead, large mouth and pale face, his eyes blue, and have 
once been very bright, his voice is feeble — he has lost some teeth, 
so the articulation is not very distinct. Audience 150 to 200 — the 
largest by far that I have seen ; when one came in after the lecture 
began, the rest hissed at him. It seems to me a pity he should lec- 
ture ; the greater part, I am told, come to hear him from curiosity — 
to see a famous man, and smile at his doctrines. Others come solely 
to mock at the senilities of a man who is going to ' squash the head 
of the great serpent of scepticism as if it were a Gottingen sausage.' 
He has few that follow his notions here at present, though of course 
all respect a man who has done so much for philosophy. The Hege- 
lians regard him as the foe of freedom, brought here to keep up the 
existing order of things." 

At Berlin he also heard Vatke, Michelet, Twesten, 
Steffens, and others, lecture. At Halle he made the ac- 
quaintance of Tholuck 5 and at Heidelberg he formed a 
friendship with Schlosser and Grervinus. The last-named 
professor, not yet 25 years old, had just taken his chair 
in the University. We find in Parker's journal a state- 
ment the depth and truth of which are attested by the 



VISIT TO EUROPE. 



59 



state of theology to-day. It is in he wrote what 

follows : 

" Gervinus thinks that the influence of Strauss has passed away ; 
so says Ullmann. I think them mistaken. The first influence, that 
of making a noise, is over, no doubt ; but the truth which he has 
brought to light will sink into the German theology, and mould it 
anew. Just as the doubts so haughtily expressed in the Wolfenblittel 
fragments have done. Men mistake a cessation of tlie means for a 
cessation of the end. Strauss organizes no party, so there is no ob- 
vious action : but his thoughts are not dead — not even inactive, I 
fancy. They will yet do some work. By-and-by his falsehood will 
get separated from his truth, and be forgot. The truth of his book 
will appear. 

Some days after he was at "Wittenberg. 

" We entered the church by the door where Luther put up the 
95 theses. I bought a copy of them in the church ; here they are 
(a pamphlet of 16 pages) ; what a change from then till now ! When 
shall the work end ? At night I walked in front of the door to 
meditate. The evening star looked down. A few persons went and 
came. The soft air fell upon my head. I felt the spirit of the great 
Reformer. Three centuries and a quarter, and what a change ! Three 
centuries and a quarter more, and it will be said, the Protestant 
religion did little in comparison with what has since been done ; 
well, if this work be of God ! "* 

In going to Tubingen he travelled with a very talkative 
young man, who boohed himself as BeMeidungs-Kunst- 
Assessor, assessor in the art of clothing, a euphuism for 
journeyman tailor, who was, as he said, travelling for the 
cesthetischen Angelegenheiten seines Herzens, that is, for the 
aesthetic interests of his heart. Doubtless he saw his 
tender prospect realized. 

At Tubingen he saw professors Ewald and Baur. He 
was delighted at the reception he received from the for- 

* On the market-place at Wittenberg is a bronze statue of Luther 
bearing this inscription : 

" Tst's Gotteswerk, so wird's bestehen; 

Ist's Menschenwerk, wird's untergehen." 
" Is it God's work, it is sure to stand; 
Is it man's work, it is sure to fall " 



60 



LIFE OE THEODORE PARKER. 



mer, whose manners must not be inferred from the in- 
jurious style of his controversial works. At Bale he 
was cordially welcomed by professor De Wette. He also 
visited the university of Bonn, and returning to England 
he had the good fortune to be in the company of Carlyle, 
Sterling, and Martineau, the eminent Unitarian minister, 
for whom he preached. 

The time for his going back home had come. In the 
midst of the surprises and gratifications of his journey in 
Europe, the feeling of his mission as a reformatory the- 
ologian had never left him, as the reader may have ob- 
served. His liberal ideas, whether in politics or in reli- 
gion, had been strengthened by everything he saw. He 
had read in our old world the not doubtful signs of a re- 
ligious transformation. But he had also seen the enor- 
mous resisting force opposed to the labours of the men of 
the future and of religious progress by the simple inert- 
ness of traditions and secular institutions, founded, so to 
say, in the very blood of European nations. In conse- 
quence he returned more than ever convinced of the need 
of that spiritual renovation, and at the same time full of 
hope that in America, on that virgin soil, and in the bosom 
of that Union scarcely more than half a century old, the 
advent of the new era would be less difficult and more 
speedy than it could be with us. "Without pretending to 
be the appointed reformer, he felt himself called to hasten 
on the period by his voice and his pen. This vocation ifc 
was impossible for him to withstand. 



61 



CHAPTEE V. 

THE MINISTER OF THE 28TH BOSTON CONGREGATION. 

Renewal of the struggle — The Melodeon — Definitive call to Boston — A 
good lady— Lectures — A pastor's day — Joys and sorrows— Children — 
Converts. 

In the autumn of 1844, to the great joy of his people, 
Parker returned to his humble ministry at W est Roxbury. 
It was easy to see that he was not to remain long there. 
Scarcely had he returned when the war against his ideas 
and his person recommenced. Discourses on The Signs 
of the Times ; a sermon on the following text, the applica- 
tion of which it is not difficult to divine, Have any of the 
Phariseesbelieved in him? energetic assaults on ecclesiastical 
pharisaism, did not contribute to put an end to it. More 
than ever he was excommunicated by the Unitarians, and 
even still more by the orthodox. His Boston friends 
thought consequently that the moment was come to offer 
him the means of preaching in that city every Sunday, 
and from the 16th of February, 1845, he conducted public 
services every week in a large hall called the Melodeon, 
which, in the intervals, was put to uses, namely, concerts 
and theatrical representations, not particularly edifying. 
Sometimes the preacher, as he took his seat on the Sun- 
day morning, beheld the frivolous instruments of the 
previous evenings' entertainment. But necessity is its 
own law, no other place could be had ; besides, the Ameri- 
cans on such a matter are not so susceptible as some 



62 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



others. The preacher and his hearers soon lost from 
view everything in concentrating their attention on high 
and solemn thoughts. If the hood does not make the 
monk, no more does the temple make the preacher. Ere 
long, in spite of anathemas, the hall became too small to 
contain an audience which ever went on increasing. With 
the eminent preacher, Henry "Ward Beecher, brother of 
the authoress of Uncle Tom, Theodore Parker was until 
his decease the most popular orator in the United States. 
Extracts from his Journal : 

" 16th February, 1845. — To-day 1 have preached at the Melodeon, 
for the first time. The weather was highly unfavourable — rainy, and 
the snow deep — the streets passable only with difficulty. Still, there 
was a large audience, mostly of men, unlike most of my audiences. 
I felt the greatness of the occasion, but I felt it too much to do jus- 
tice, perhaps, to myself. I felt not at ease in my service. I felt as 
one that is with some friends, with some foes, with many strangers. 
It has been a clay of struggles. A long, long warfare opens before 
me ! Shall I prove worthy ? How much can I do ? How much 
can I bear ? I know not. I look only to the soul of my soul, not 
with over-confidence in myself, but with an adamantine faith in God. 

" The greeting of some friends did me much good. I love to take 

a friend by the hand. Mrs came into the little room, and took 

me by the hand. I am a child in some things, I hope I shall al- 
ways be. 

" March 3. — I have but one resource, and that is to overcome evil 
with good — much evil with more good ; old evil with new good. 
Sometimes when I receive a fresh insult it makes my blood rise for a 
moment ; then it is over, and I seek, if possible, to do some good, se- 
cretly, to the person. It takes away the grief of a wound amazingly. 
To be true to God, and ' that one talent which 'tis death to hide ' — 
this depends on me. To know that I am thus true depends on 
others, and if they know it not, why that is not my affair, but theirs ! 
Sometimes I wish that death would come and fan me to sleep with 
his wings : but faith soon stops that murmur, and a ' Thy will be 
done ! ' is prayer enough for me." 

The growing success of his preachings at Boston de- 
termined his friends to take another step, and, profiting 
by the entire religious liberty that reigns in America, 
they formed themselves into an independent society, and 



MINISTER OF THE 28TH BOSTON CONGREGATION. 63 

invited Parker to become their minister. To do so, "he 
was obliged to break the official bonds which still linked 
him with the constituted Unitarianism of New England. 
As to those official bonds, they were never totally destroyed, 
and to whatever outbursts his genius drove him, he was 
at the bottom never anything else than a Unitarian min- 
ister more advanced than the rest. However, it cost him 
much to separate from his dear little society of West 
Eoxbury. He expressed his regret to his people in 
touching language, thanking them for their confidence 
and their sympathies, which had never failed for an in- 
stant. " My desire would have been," he said to them, 
" to remain with you always, but duty calls me to another 
field." To justify his departure he alleged the tacit ex- 
communication of which he was the object on the part of 
nearly all his colleagues, and which amounted to his total 
exclusion from all the important pulpits ; as well as the 
necessity under which he lay to spread the truth as much 
as possible in the great centres whence it might radiate 
far and wide. 

The religious society formed under Parker refused to 
take any sectarian name. In reality, it was not a separate 
Church that Parker and his friends intended to found. 
By no means did they desire to supplant the old societies 
by means of proselytism. Their ambition was to under- 
take the useful, if secondary part, which Unitarianism, for 
the moment, had not the courage to play, that is, to 
foment a reformatory leaven, the regenerating action of 
which should sooner or later make itself felt within the 
circles of other communities. The better to mark that 
part, which will surprise no one acquainted with the ideas 
prevalent among Protestants in regard to the subject of 
the Church, Parker entitled his society simply " The 
twenty-eighth Congregational Society in Boston." 

His inaugural sermon turned on " The true idea of a 



64 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



Christian Church ; " # that is, on the object which ought 
to be proposed to itself by a Church faithful to the Chris- 
tian character, and to the essential principle of Chris- 
tianity, in order to fulfil its mission in the bosom of a 
society which has its grandeurs, its wants, its miseries, 
and which for the most part finds in the traditional 
Churches only institutions and maxims fitted for the 
middle ages, at the furthest for the two last generations, 
and little or nothing which really and powerfully corre- 
sponds to the aspirations of our own age. A compact 
crowd welcomed this frank and manly discourse. Thence- 
forwards the hall of the Melodeon was too small to contain 
those who desired to drink of the living waters which the 
Holy Spirit caused to spring forth from the too frequently 
arid soil of American TTnitarianism. Thenceforwards, too, 
the desire to hear Parker became greater in the neigh- 
bouring towns. He preached in several fresh pulpits 
where ministers had a general sympathy with his views. 
Sometimes he preached a Christianity at once positive 
and advanced, even under the veil of an incognito. On 
one of these occasions a good lady, transported at hearing 
one of his sermons, exclaimed, " Oh, I wish that infidel 
Theodore Parker could have heard that ! " f Meanwhile 
it might have been expected that the distrust of which 
he was the object in ecclesiastical circles and bodies 
would give way to sentiments and conduct of a more 
brotherly description. Not so ; the ministers and as- 
sociations by whom he was repelled did nothing but con- 
form to the opinion of the multitude. In this state of 
things, and notwithstanding the popularity won for his 
ideas by his Boston discourses taken down in short-hand 
while being delivered, and propagated by the press to the 
remotest limits of the country, even as far as the pioneers 

* See some portions of this discourse at the end of the volume, 
f See Weiss, vol. i. 261. 



MUriSTSB OF THE 28TH BOSTON CONGREGATION. 65 

of the "Western solitudes. # Parker did not yet feel him- 
self possessed of a lever powerful enough to remove the 
heavy load of ignorance and narrowness which pressed on 
the religious life of America. Then did he carry into 
effect a plan which he had long cherished, and which had 
already been in part executed. The plan was to turn to 
account the excellent means of communication which the 
north of the United States had already multiplied over its 
surface, in order to deliver lectures in various cities of the 
Union. The first winter he gave forty in as many different 
places. This figure rose to eighty and even a hundred 
lectures a year. It is reckoned that in this way he made 
himself heard by more than a hundred thousand persons 
yearly. It was seldom that the subjects of his lectures 
turned directly on religious questions. Xo where would 
he have found a place or an audience had he announced 
such subjects. But who can but admire the simplicity of 
those who thought they would with impunity listen to 
the Boston orator on the fine arts, on politics, on litera- 
ture, on social economy, without being infected with 
the heresies necessarily running through the whole of 
what he said. However, it required all Parker's energy, 
knowledge, and imagination to execute such an amount 
of labour, especially since his journeys, often extending to 
more than a hundred miles from Boston, were not allowed 
to interfere with his pastoral obligations. He paid special 
attention to his weekly discourses. At appointed times 
he opened his house to receive besides his friends those 
who desired to form his acquaintance, who often were 
proscribed ones of different lands, whom he assisted with 
his purse as well as his counsels, perhaps slaves who had 
escaped from the South. His conversation appears to 
have been lively and attractive, full of humour and origin- 

* It is calculated that some of his sermons reached a circulation of 
many hundreds of thousands of copies. 

•5 



66 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



ality, though always turning on topics the most serious. 
Then families in mourning, the poor, the sick, prisoners 
too, sought benefit from his ministry. He was aided by 
some devoted ladies who, under his direction, radiated 
beneficence in quarters the most wretched.* His sole 
considerable outlay consisted in purchases of books, for 
he was always a great reader, and he collected a superb 
library ; one is literally amazed in seeing in his journal 
the number of books, &c, he annually perused. He also 
found means to establish, with some friends, The Mas- 
sachusetts Quarterly Review, and for three years to per- 
form the duties of editor almost alone. He was obliged 
to give it up for want of a sufficient number of fellow - 
labourers, and because increasing occupations, of a special 
kind, more and more absorbed his thoughts. "Time," he 
sometimes remarked, " stretches out like India rubber." 
"We here transcribe from his journal the doings of one of 
his days : 

" I had been to the Post- Office, had sewed the sheets of my 
Easter sermon together, and sat down to make a brief of the matter, 

when — 1. in comes Mrs K , to talk over her connubial affairs. 

She stayed till about 11, when — 2. in comes Mr McKay, and as we 
talked of various things it was announced that — 3. Dr Papin was 
down-stairs. I went to see him, and — 4. R. W. Emerson was coming 
up the stairs. I left him in the study, and saw the Doctor, who 
came seeking relief for a poor woman ; then returned, and we talked 
of the new journal : saw Carlyle's letter about Margaret. Nos. 3, 4, 
and 2 successively went away. I was descending the stairs, when, 
lo ! — 5 appears, George Ripley, and we talked of the condition of 
civilization, the prospects of humanity. Dinner came, one hour. 
Went to see Mr : not at home : visited other people in the after- 
noon : tea. At half-past seven sat down to the sermon : in a minute 
came — 6. Mr F. C, wanting to borrow 12 dollars, which I lent him 
gladly. Then sat down to write : at a quarter past eight came — 7. 
Mr M . All chance of work was now at an end, so I gave up, 



* One of these, Miss Stevenson, became the Florence Nightingale of 
the Unionist army. The Federal Government confided to her the direc- 
tion of an immense military hospital. 



MINISTER OF THE 28TH BOSTON CONGREGATION. 67 

and went down to the parlour. A little before nine came a ring, and 

then — 8 appeared, Mr , who was interested to kill a man that 

had done a wrong to one of his friends, and brought a letter of de- 
fiance. I burned the letter after a long talk, but could not wholly 
overcome the man's feelings of revenge. At 10 he retired, and at a 
quarter before 11, I also, to rest — not to sleep for a long time." 

He was indeed often troubled by insomnolence. In 
the midst of a life so occupied, embellished by the affec- 
tion of a devoted wife and chosen friends, among whom 
were E. W. Emerson, the noble writer ; Sumner, the dis- 
tinguished legist, and, at the time, the first orator of the 
American Congress ; Desor, the learned professor of 
Xeuchatel, then for some time settled in America ; and 
many other notabilities of the press, the bar, the pulpit, 
and the commercial world ; Theodore Parker, neverthe- 
less, had his vexations. He suffered more than he would 
admit from his unpopularity as a theologian, from the 
venom, the wrath, the malevolence, tokens of which he 
met with every step he took. He now and then was 
tempted to doubt, not the truth which he announced, but 
his ability to secure its triumph, and such fear in men at 
once humble and bold is very painful. Often, also, he had 
the grief to perceive that several of those who attended 
his ministry connected themselves with him only in the 
notion of joining the advantages of affiliation with an 
established religious community to those of a reduction 
of the duties of a religious life to the lowest level. This 
is a sad experience often endured by men of religious 
progress ; to which, nevertheless, they are compelled to 
resign themselves. VTe subjoin some extracts from his 
journal : 

" Christmas, 1847. — To-day I received from Archdeacon Wolff, at 
Kiel, the translation of my Discourses, &c. The work awakened 
such heart-beatings as I have not often had for a cause seemingly so 
slight. I read the lines of his preface, in which he speaks so tenderly 
of me. not without many tears. Is it possible that I am to be hence- 
forth a power in the world to move men, a name which shall kindle 

o * 



68 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



men to goodness and piety, a nam'B of power ? I think little enough 
of fame. But to be a man who can lead mankind a little onward, 
that thought would charm me. 

" Well, at reading that, remembering, too, how I have been 
treated here, I must confess I wept ; and since have felt the better 
for my tears. God grant I may be more and better as the years 
go by ! 

"February, 1848. — On Tuesday I attended a funeral of a child, 
five or six years old ; but the parents do not believe in the continuous 
and conscious life of the soul. It was terribly sad. The friends that 
I talked with were superficial and conceited. I have seldom attended 
a sadder funeral. They wanted no form of prayer, but for decency's 
sake, wanted a minister and an address. I suppose they sent for me 
as the minimum of a minister. I tried to give them the maximum 
of humanity while their hearts were pliant, and they excited by grief. 
The man seemed a worthy man, humane, but with an unlucky 
method of philosophy. I see not how any one can live without a 
continual sense of immortality. I am sure I should be wretched 
without a certainty of that." 

Another and a deeper regret was his having no chil- 
dren. Books, flowers, children were his three chief pas- 
sions. "We know what he did with books. As to flowers, 
they inspired him. This went so far that he preached 
more eloquently when he had flowers on his desk, and 
when cherished hands took pains so to decorate it each 
Sunday. Children he all but worshipped. He was ofkvii 
surprised in his study, having interrupted his grave oc- 
cupations to lend himself to the caprices of the little pets 
of the neighbourhood who had always free ingress into his 
house. " A man who has not children," he in 1846 wrote 
to a lady among his friends, " is deprived not only of a 
great comfort and a great joy, but also of a very import- 
ant educational element. I have always noted this fact 
in others, I feel it in my own destiny." 

Here follows two letters written in reply to communi- 
cations made to him by his hearers of the recent birth of 
children : 

" I thank you for so kindly remembering me in such an access 
of new gladness to your hearth and hearts — nay, heart, for there is 



MINISTER OF THE 28TH BOSTON CONGREGATION. 69 



but one, especially at such a time, in man and wife. I have sons 
and daughters, sympathetically, in the good fortune of my friends. I 
was expecting to hear of this advent in your family. God bless the 
little immortal, who comes a new Messiah to cheer and bless the 
world of home." 

,; It is my lot to have no little darlings to call my own. Yet all 
the more I rejoice in the heavenly blessings of my friends. The 
thing that I miss most deeply in coming from Boxbury to Boston is 
the society of my neighbours' little children, whom I saw several 
times a day, and fondled, and carried, and trotted, and dandled, in 
all sorts of ways, as if they had been mine own. 

" Well : God bless the life that is given, and the life that is 
spared, and the life which rejoices in them both ! I thank the new 
mother for remembering an old friend in such an hour. So give her 
my most affectionate greetings." 

On the other hand, one of his best joys, of his highest 
comforts, was to learn that souls corroded with doubt, 
tormented with irreligion, had found peace and hope by 
bearing his sermons or reading his books. This joy was 
often granted him. As a specimen of his correspondence 
with his converts, we transcribe the two following letters ; 
the first addressed in 18^8 to a physician in Utica (New 
York), the second to a lady of high distinction as a thinker 
and writer, and who had sent him from England, where 
she had read several of his works, the first expressions of 
a grateful affection which death is far from having ex- 
ting wished. 

" I thank you for the kind things which you say of my writing*, 
I sincerely hope they may do a little to direct the atteution of men 
to the great realities of religion, and help make the earth the para- 
dise which God designed. I see most hopeful signs. Here in Bos- 
ton and its vicinity there has been a great change for the better in 
half-a-dozen years. Men do not insist so much as formerly on what 
is reckoned miraculous in Christianity. The more I study the nature 
of man and |he history of his progress, the more I am filled with 
admiration at the genius of Jesus of Xazareth, and with love for his 
beautiful character and life. He is the greatest achievement of the 
human races, and Christianity the greatest idea which mankind has 
thought out as yet ; for, take the results of Christianity into account, 
it is the greatest fact in human history. 

But I look on all that has gone before as only the spring-time 



70 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



of religion, the few warm days in March which melt the snow off the 
most southern slopes of the hills, and only promise violets and roses. 
The real summer and autumn of Christianity, I think, are a good 
way off. But they are certain, and every good man, every good 
deed, every good thought or feeling, helps forward the time." 

We will also quote this letter which he received from 
a young man who wrote to him from the Far West. 

" I wish I could express to you on paper my feelings, the joy, the 
peace, the satisfaction I feel in contemplating the thoughts of the 
good God in His works. It is not a great while since the thought of 
God was the most terrible that ever crossed my mind. What hope- 
less agony I have suffered, as in the dead of night I have thought of 
the endless hell to which in all probability I was hastening ! and yet 
the grim and ghastly hell of the Christian theology was preferable to 
its idea of God. But, thank God, it is past, though it is hard to 
have ' Infidel ! ' hissed in my ears, to have those whom I once con- 
sidered my bosom friends turn away. Yet I gladly bear it ; yes, ten 
times more, than turn back to my former belief. 

" I have new thoughts, new objects, new aspirations ; everything 
is new, new heavens, new earth, with no dark future beyond. But I 
look forward to a future bright, glorious, grand ; and I look forward 
with a peaceful calmness that is surprising to me. There is no fear, 
for I cannot fear what is good. " 

Many more testimonies of the same kind would be at 
our disposal were it necessary to enlarge on the point. 
All those who, whether near or at a distance, have found 
themselves in a position similar to that of Theodore Par- 
ker, will understand that communications of the kind 
were to him so many delights. They will understand, 
consequently, this word which occurs in a letter to one of 
his friends : " A poet has not more joy in singing than I 
have in preaching." 



71 



CHAPTEE VI. 

AN AMERICAN REFORMER. 

Idea of perfection — Ordinary life and religions life — Protestant bigotry — 
Vivifying religion — The Gospel and Buddhism — American society — The 
four great powers — Social misery — How it is not always easy to do 
good — The two political principles — A sower gone forth to sow — The 
drnnkard's song and the minister's text — Music Hall — Parker's 
preaching — Sermons and political discourses — Philanthropy — Detested, 
but listened to. 

It is important to give yet more exact accounts of the 
end which Parker proposed to himself, and the means 
which he employed to attain it. 

With him, as we have seen, religion corresponded to 
an in-born want of human nature, and was designed to be 
the purifying leaven, the vivifying motive of man's daily 
life. To be religious and to aim at perfection on all the 
domains which man has to traverse, was with him the 
same thing. For if religion is summed up in the love of 
G-od, G-od, whom he did not attempt to define, was to Par- 
ker essentially the living and absolute perfection. 

Liberty the fullest — civil, political, religious liberty, 
is one of the first consequences of such principles, one of 
the first requirements of their application. For man can- 
not unfold himself in the way of perfecting his being ex- 
cept on condition of his being free. When one beholds 
what, owing to a freedom so often restricted, to a develop- 
ment still much obstructed, man has already realized in 
the way of progress, reforms, conquests over brute na- 



72 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER 



ture ; when one observes that definitely true morality and 
true piety regularly profit by discoveries and ameliora- 
tions which emancipate men from the servitude and im- 
pulses of purely sensual life ; when one apprehends in 
both history and one's own heart that law of continual 
perfectionment which is nothing else than the incessant 
action of the Creator in his intelligent creature, whom he 
thus draws up toward his own transcendent excellence, 
whom he brings to himself by radiating before his eyes 
the splendour of the ideal, — religion changes not indeed 
in principle, but in substance and form. If it is conscience 
and the voluntary tightening of the bond which unites 
man to God, it must call forth a profound and ceaseless 
sentiment of the duty of seeking perfection not only in 
but around yourself. Then worship, public or private, 
religious exercises in general, instead of being its own 
object in which you may rest and be satisfied, or the price 
paid for a purchasable salvation, becomes an assemblage 
of means intended to induce and to facilitate the perfec- 
tion of the entire man — body, intelligence, and heart. 

This view deserves a little reflection. In the ages when 
man, a stranger to the idea of progress, saw in the Divinity 
only a formidable power with whom it was of untold im- 
portance to stand well, whatever the cost, it might be by 
means of magic rites or sacerdotal absolutions, or the 
profession of dogmas accounted necessary to salvation, 
religious life and ordinary life were two things not only 
distinct, but separate ; juxtaposed the one to the other, 
but without reciprocal penetration. Man laboured, earned 
subsistence, married, gave himself up to the pleasures he 
preferred and to the labours of his position ; and then, 
he prayed, he performed rites, he went to the priest, he 
frequented the Church, he told the beads of his rosary, or 
mumbled the articles of his creed. Without doubt, re- 
ligious forms of a somewhat higher kind, especially Chris- 



AN AMERICAN REFORMER. 



73 



tianity, always undertook to direct ordinary life by their 
ethical teachings ; but as the transgressions, which were 
inevitable, were expiated or compensated by one or the 
other of the external and factitious means which we have 
enumerated, it followed that, in the final issue, religious 
life, with its superiority over ordinary life, acquired a 
character of its own, and continued to form a pure and 
simple antithesis thereto. Thus, in order to be religious, 
it became necessary to curtail the natural life as much as 
possible — for instance, to pass hours and days in prayers 
indefinitely reiterated, in fasts, in religious ceremonies. 
The monastery, in a word, became the ideal. All could 
not enter it, for all were not capable. But those who re- 
mained outside could do nothing better than approach the 
monastic life as much as was permitted by the exigencies 
of the age. All this was absurd, but logical ; God and 
the world were considered as separate from each other, 
and opposed to each other. Consequently such was the 
relative position of religious life and secular life. Such 
is the fundamental idea which determines the direction 
followed by Catholic piety in the middle ages. 

The Reformation did much to put an end to this dual- 
ism. To a large extent it caused religious life to enter 
into secular life. No longer recognizing magical rites 
and real sacerdotal power, restoring the sanctity of mar- 
ried life and family life, denying all merit to external 
works, and not admitting that man could be saved except 
by his own individual faith, it considerably contracted 
the reserved space previously occupied by religious life 
as ecclesiastically considered, as well as rendered more 
intense and more continuous the action of religious prin- 
ciples on the acts of man's daily existence. Nevertheless, 
it did not follow out its principle in full. It committed 
the fault of confounding faith with certain dogmatical 
tneses, which often remaining without any influence over 



74 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



the heart and the conscience, were in reality as external, 
as foreign to them, as aforetime had been the priest's 
words or the paper indulgences.* This dualism rested 
also on the view, a little theoretically modified by the 
Eeformation in its earliest days, of a God and a world 
standing opposite to each other. Hence it came that 
Protestantism also had, and has, its bigotry, its formalism, 
and its petty hostilities to a thoroughly human life. Often 
did the opinion gain ground in its bosom that the most 
religious men were those who read the Bible most, heard 
the greatest number of sermons, prayed the most fre- 
quently, and professed the strictest fidelity to confessional 
orthodoxy. Protestantism, consequently, had its Biblical 
dialect, just as Catholicism had its mass-book jargon, and 
what in appearance was only ridiculous, was at the bottom 
the sign of an hostility more or less decided to a simple 
and natural mode of life. Hence that sombre Puritanism 
which condemned, as diabolical art, science, and innocent 
pleasure. The important is that you practise, says the 
ultramontane bigotry, the essential is that you profess, 
says the Protestant bigotry. 

Here both, the one as well as the other, have deviated 
from the fundamental Christian thought. What is im- 
portant, what is essential, Jesus says, is to love ; love and 
you will practise what you ought to do ; love and you 
will see what you ought to believe. Ama et fac quod vis 
(love and do what you like), said Augustin, in one of his 
last moments ; and we add, Ama et crede quod poteris 
(love and believe what you can). 

Suppose now that instead of separating God from the 
world you see in the world the permanent manifestation 
of God himself ; that in consequence you investigate the 

* Scraps of paper or parchment on which were written or printed the 
remission of sins granted to A. B. on certain (often pecuniary) conditions 
by the sacerdotal authority under the papacy. T. 



AX AMERICAN REFORMER. 



75 



immanent laws of the physical and moral world, saying 
that they are so many divine volitions ; that thereby man 
is led to the conclusion that he is called of God to labour, 
to live in society as a son, a husband, a father, a citizen 
of a town and a country, finally as a member of the great 
human family, — then that kind of religion which consists 
in forms, in rites, in dogmas, has lost all value. Religious 
doctrine, considered as what is essential, will lay down 
certain principles very rich in application, but in them- 
selves very simple. Religious life, considered as a distinct 
kind of life, will hold relatively a very small place in ex- 
istence, but — and this is the grand side of the view — it 
will act within on the entire man. According to the pro- 
found expression of an apostle, eating, drinking, sleeping, 
waking, rest, labour, all will be and conduce to the glory 
of God (1 Cor. x. 31). The labourer at the plough, the 
artisan in the timber-yard, the weaver in the factory, the 
mother by the cradle's side, the merchant in his count- 
ing-house, the artist in his studies, the chemist in his 
laboratory, the astronomer in his observatory, all will 
have with them, no less in small things than in large, the 
love, the desire, the thirst for perfection. Actuated by 
religion, they will do their best to imprint on all the seal 
of the exact, the beautiful, the grand ; in a word, the 
perfect. Actuated by religion, they will also reverently 
abstain from whatever sullies, enervates, or enslaves the 
soul. Actuated by religion, they will, moreover, exert 
their energies to put an end to social corruption and 
miseries. Actuated by religion, men will be liberal in 
politics, peacefully reforming, and skilfully philanthropic. 
Actuated by religion, they will ever desire more light and 
still more light, not for themselves only, but for others as 
well. " More light, you can never see too well," that 
will be the continual homage which such a religion will 
render to God, who is himself light. And by the con- 



76 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



currence of all these pure desires, all these ardent efforts, 
all these valiant struggles against evil, against darkness, 
the kingdom of God will at length come on earth, as it has 
already come in the heart of those who enrol themselves 
in this holy crusade. Eeligion thus conceived, appears 
almost annihilated to partisans of the religion of the 
past, habituated, as they are to consider it as necessarily 
bound to special acts and forms. Nevertheless, it is as 
real, as continuous, as beneficent as the invisible sap 
which vitalizes the trunk, the branches, and the smallest 
twigs of a sound and vigorous tree. It plunges its roots into 
the legitimate element of mysticism, often exaggerated, 
often misunderstood. On the sole condition of not pre- 
senting itself as an enemy to reason and conscience, 
mysticism — that intense joy that you have in a sense 
of personal communion with God — is a delight no less 
strengthening than desirable. 

Either we are altogether deceived, or this is the re- 
ligion which the 19th century needs. Specially is this 
the religion which the 20th century will demand. On 
this side only it is that henceforwards there will be joy, 
pure and confiding joy, that sacred sign of the great 
things which are already commencing. This religion of 
our modern times is at the bottom nothing else than the 
blossoming of the evangelical principle, become life and 
power in Jesus of Nazareth. To love God with all your 
heart, that is to say, ideal perfection realized, is not this 
the first of all the commandments ? And to love man as 
yourself, that is to say, the beini;- who possesses virtual 
perfection, the being who is perfectible, is not this " the 
second commandment, like unto the first ? " And on 
this depend the law and the prophets, all true morality, 
all saintly hope. Those who have accused the Gospel of 
Jesus of diminishing human energy, and thus made it col- 



AX AMERICAN REFORMER. 



77 



lateral with Buddhism, have not understood its first 
words. Buddhism did know the love of man, hence its 
moral value and its beauty ; but it did not know the love 
of Grod, hence its feebleness and its sterility. Our 
readers will pardon this lengthened digression. If we 
have left our subject, we have not ceased to coast along 
it. Certainly Theodore Parker would have approved of 
all we have just said in terms scarcely different from what 
he employed in order to popularize views altogether 
similar. Those who make religion consist in many rites 
observed and many dogmas professed, will probably be 
disposed to find religion with him reduced to an imper- 
ceptible minimum; for his confession of faith was very 
short, and never was any one less a formalist, less a 
ritualist, than he. This went so far, that in our opinion 
he was not always just in the semi-indifference with 
which he regarded the two simple sacraments of the Pro- 
testant Church, Baptism, and the Lord's Supper. But if 
you place yourself at the point of view which we have 
endeavoured to present, you will hardly fail to acknow- 
ledge that few men have possessed and put forth as much 
religion as our American Reformer. 

The religious, moral, and social advancement of man, 
war declared against the ignorance, servitude, and cor- 
ruption which retard it in those three several ways — this 
was his great task. But that task he had to discharge in 
a determinate age and country, in the 19th century, and 
in the United States of America. He had before him 
powers more or less interested in, or enslaved to, the 
abuses he wished to root out, and a people very superior 
to many others in various relations, but nevertheless a 
prey to evils either similar to those from which all na- 
tions suffer, or ensuing from their particular temperament 
and situation. Let us trace, in making use of his own 



78 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



words, the state of things such as it offered itself to hiin, 
and how he was led to the line of conduct which he 
adopted for the reformation of the American nation. # 

;< The great obvious social forces in America may be thus summed 
up:— 

" 1. There is the organized trading power — having its home in 
the great towns, which seeks gain with small regard to that large 
justice which represents alike the mutual interests and duties of ail 
men, and to that humanity which interposes the affectional instinct 
when conscience is asleep. This power seems to control all things, 
amenable only to the all-mighty dollar. 

" 2. The organized political power, the parties in office, or seek- 
ing to become so. This makes the statutes, but is commonly con- 
trolled by the trading power, and has all of its faults often intensified ; 
yet it seems amenable to the instincts of the people, who, on great 
occasions, sometimes interfere and change the traders' rule. 

" 3. The organized ecclesiastical power, the various sects which, 
though quite unlike, yet all mainly agree in their fundamental prin- 
ciple of vicariousness — an alleged revelation, instead of actual human 
faculties, salvation from God's wrath and eternal ruin, by the aton- 
ing blood of crucified God. This is more able than either of the 
others ; and though often despised, in a few years can control them 
both. In this generation no American politician dares affront it. 

" 4:. The organized literary power, the endowed colleges, the 
periodical press, with its triple multitude of journals — commercial, 
political, theological — and sectarian tracts. This has no original 
ideas, but diffuses the opinion of the other powers whom it represents, 
whose will it serves, and whose kaleidoscope it is. 

" I must examine these four great social forces, and show what 
was good in them, and what was ill ; ascertain what natural religion 
demanded of each, and what was the true function of trade, govern- 
ment, a church, and a literature. When I came to a distinct con- 
sciousness of my own first principle, and my consequent relation to 
what was about me, spite of the good they contained, I found myself 
greatly at variance with all the four. They had one principle and I 
another ; of course, our aim and direction were commonly different 
and often opposite. Soon I found that I was not welcome to the 
American market, state, church, nor press. It could not be other- 
wise ; yet I confess I had not anticipated so thorough a separation 
betwixt me and these forces which control society, but had laid out 



* What follows is taken from " Theodore Parker's Experience as a 
Minister," addressed by him in a letter to his people in 1859, the last year 
of his life. 



AN AMERICAN REFORMER. 



79 



work I could not execute alone, nor perhaps without the aid of all 
the four. 

" When I first came to Boston I intended to do something for the 
peiishing and dangerous classes in our great towns. The amount of 
poverty and consequent immorality in Boston is terrible to think of. 
while you remember the warning of other nations, and look to the 
day after to-day ? Yet it seemed to me the money given by public 
and private charity — two fountains that never fail in Puritanic Bos- 
ton — was more than sufficient to relieve it all, and gradually remove 
the deep-seated and unseen cause which, in the hurry of business and 
of money, is not attended to. There is a hole in the dim-lit public 
bridge, where many fall through and perish ! Our mercy pulls a few 
out of the water ; it does not stop the hole, nor light the bridge, nor 
warn men of the peril. We need the great charity that palliates 
effects of wrong, and the greater justice which removes the cause. 

" Then there was drunkenness, which is the greatest concrete 
curse of the labouring Protestant population of the North, working 
most hideous and wide-extended desolation. It is as fatal as starva- 
tion to the Irish Catholic. None of the four great social forces is 
its foe. There, too, was prostitution ; men and women mutually 
polluted and polluting, blackening the face of society with dreadful 
woe. Besides, in our great towns I found thousands, especially the 
poorer Irish, oppression driving them to us, who, save the discipline 
of occasional work, got no education here except what the streets 
taught them in childhood, or the Popish priest and the American 
demagogue — their two worst foes. 

" Still more, I learned early in life that the criminal is often the 
victim of society, rather than its foe, and that our penal law belongs 
to the dark ages of brute force, and aims only to protect society by 
vengeance on the felon, not also to elevate mankind by refining him. 
In my boyhood I knew a man, the last result of generations of ances- 
tral crime, who spent more than 20 years in our State Prison, and 
died there, under sentence for life, whose entire illegal thefts did not 
amount to twenty dollars ! and another, not better born, who law- 
fully stole houses and farms, lived a ' gentleman,' and at death left 
a considerable estate, and the name of Land-shark. While a theo- 
logical student I taught a class in the Sunday School of the State 
Prison, often saw my fellow-townsmen, became well acquainted with 
several convicts, learned the mode of treatment, and heard the ser- 
mons and ghastly prayers which were let fly at the heads of the poor, 
unprotected wretches ; I saw the ; orthodox preachers and other 
helps,' who gave them 'spiritual instruction,' and learned the utter 
insufficiency of our penal law to mend the felon or prevent his growth 
in wickedness. When I became your minister I hoped to do some- 
thing for this class of men. whose crimes are sometimes but a part 
of their congenital misfortune or social infamy, and who are bereft 



80 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



of the sympathy of mankind, and unconstitutionally beset with 
sectarian ministers, whose function is to torment them before their 
time. 

i{ For all these, the poor, the drunken, and the ignorant, for the 
prostitute, and the criminal, I meant to do something, under the 
guidance, perhaps, or certainly with the help, of the controlling men 
of the town or state; but, alas! I was then fourteen years younger 
than now, and did not quite understand all the consequences of my 
relation to these great social forces, or how much I had offended the 
religion of the state, the press, the market, and the church. The 
cry, ' Destroyer,' ' Fanatic,' ' Infidel,' ' Atheist,' 1 Enemy of mankind,' 
was so widely sounded forth that I soon found I could do little in 
these great philanthropies, where the evil lay at our own door. Many 
as you are for a religious society,* you were too few and too poor to 
undertake what should be done ; and outside of your ranks I could 
look for little help, even by words and counsel. Besides, I soon 
found my very name was enough to ruin any new good enterprise. 
I knew there were three periods in each great movement of mankind 
— that of sentiment, ideas, and action : I fondly hoped the last had 
come ; but when I found I had reckoned without the host, I turned 
my attention to the two former, and sought to arouse the sentiment 
of justice and mercy, and to diffuse the ideas which belonged to this 
five-fold reformation. Hence I took pains to state the facts of po- 
verty, drunkenness, ignorance, prostitution, crime; to show their 
cause, their effect, and their mode of cure, leaving it for others to do 
the practical work. So, if I wanted a measure carried in the Legis- 
lature of the town or state, or by some private benevolent society, I 
did my work by stealth. I sometimes saw my scheme prosper, and 
read my words in the public reports, while the whole enterprise had 
been ruined at once if my face or name had appeared in connection 
with it. I have often found it wise to withhold my name from peti- 
tions I have myself set a-going and found successful ; I have got up 
conventions, or mass meetings, whose ' managers ' asked me not to 
show my face thereat. 

" This chronic and progressive unpopularity led to another change 
of my plans, not abating my activity, but turning it in another direc- 
tion. To accomplish my work, I must spread my ideas as widely as 
possible,without resorting to that indecency of advertising so common 
in America. There was but one considerable publishing-house in 
the land that would continue to issue my works — this only at my 
own cost and risk. As it had only a pecuniary interest therein, and 
that so slight in its enormous business, my books did not have the 
usual opportunity of getting known and circulated. They were 



* Parker's congregation consisted of from seven to eight thousand souls. 



AX AMERICAN REFORMER. 



81 



seldom offered for sale, except in one book-store in Boston; for other 
States I must often be my own bookseller. None of the Quarterlies 
or Monthlies was friendly to me; most of the newspapers were hos- 
tile; the New York Tribune and Evening Post were almost the only 
exceptions. So my books had but a small circulation at home in 
comparison with their diffusion in England and Germany, where, 
also, they received not only hostile, but most kindly notice, and 
sometimes from a famous pen. Bat another opportunity for diffus- 
ing my thought offered itself in the Lyceum or public lecture. Op- 
posed by these four great social forces at home, I was surprised to 
find myself becoming popular in the lecture-hall. 

" I saw the nation had reached an important crisis in its destina- 
tion, and, though ignorant of the fact, yet stood hesitating between 
two principles. The one was slavery, which I knew leads at once to 
military despotism — political, ecclesiastical, social — and ends at last 
in utter and hopeless ruin ; for no people fallen on that road has 
ever risen again ; it is the path so many other Republics have taken 
and finished their course, as Athens and the Ionian towns have done, 
as Rome and the Commonwealths of the Middle Ages. The other 
was freedom, which leads at once to industrial democracy — respect 
for labour, government over all, by all, for the sake of all, rule after 
the eternal right as it is writ in the constitution of the universe — 
securing welfare and progress. I saw that these four social forces 
were advising, driving, coaxing, wheedling the people to take the 
road to ruin ; that our ' great men,' in which ' America is so rich 
beyond all other nations of the earth,' went strutting along that path 
to show how safe it is, crying out ' Democracy, ' Constitution,' ' Wash- 
ington,' 'Gospel,' 'Christianity,' 'Dollars,' and the like; while the 
instincts of the people, the traditions of our history, and the rising 
genius of men and women well-born in these times of peril, with still, 
small voice, whispered something of self-evident truths and inalien- 
able rights. 

" I knew the power of a great Idea ; and spite of the market, the 
State, the Church, the press, I thought a few earnest men in the 
lecture -halls of the North might yet incline the people's mind and 
heart to justice and the eternal law of God— the only safe rule of 
conduct for nations, as for you and me — and so make the American 
experiment a triumph and a joy for all humankind. 

" Since 1848, I have lectured eighty or a hundred times each year 
— in every Northern State east of the Mississippi, once also in a 
Slave State, and on slavery itself. I have taken most exciting and 
important subjects, of the greatest concern to the American people, 
and treated them independently of sect or party, street or press, and 
with what learning and talent I could command. I put the matter 
in quite various forms — for each audience is made up of various ca- 
pacities. For eight or ten years, on an average, I have spoken to sixty 

6 



82 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKEH. 



or a hundred thousand persons in each year, besides addressing you 
on Sundays, in the great hall you throw open to all comers.* 

" Thus I have had a wide field of operation, where I might rouse 
the sentiment of justice and mercy, diffuse such ideas as I thought 
needful for the welfare and progress of the people, and prepare for 
such action as the occasion might one day require. As I was sup- 
posed to stand nearly alone, and did not pretend to represent any 
one but myself, nobody felt responsible for me ; so all could judge 
me, if not fairly, at least with no party or sectarian prejudice in my 
favour; and as I felt responsible only to myself and my God, I could 
speak freely : this was a two-fold advantage. I hope I have not 
spoken in vain. I thought that by each lecture I could make a new, 
deep, and lasting impression of some one great truth on five thought- 
ful men, out of each thousand who heard me. Don't think me 
extravagant ; it is only one-half of one per cent. ! If I spoke but 
thus efficiently to 60,000 in a winter, there would be 300 so impressed, 
and in 10 years it would be 3000 ! Such a result would satisfy me 
for my work and my loss of scholarly time in this home mission for 
lectures. Besides, the newspapers of the large towns spread wide the 
more salient facts and striking generalizations of the lecture, and I 
addressed the eyes of an audience I could not count nor see. 

" Nor was this all. I had been ecclesiastically reported to the 
people as a ' disturber of the public peace/ * an infidel,' ' an atheist,' 
4 an enemy to mankind.' When I was to lecture in a little town, the 
minister, even the Unitarian, commonly stayed at home. Many, in 
public or private, warned their followers 1 against listening to that 
bad man. Don't look him in the face ! ' Others stoutly preached 
against me. So, in the bar-room ' I was the song of the drunkard,' 
and the minister's text in the pulpit. But, when a few hundreds, in 



* He sometimes attended meetings convened in order to encourage 
abuses he desired to root up, and took part therein despite the anger and 
shouts of their advocates. " On one such occasion we (says Miss Cobbe, 
preface to her edition of Parker's i Collected Works/ p. 28) have been 
told by an eye-witness that he was standing in a gallery at a large pro- 
Slavery meeting in New York, when one of the orators tauntingly re- 
marked, ' I should like to know what Theodore Parker would say to 
that.* ' Would you like to know ? ' cried he, starting forwards into view ; 
4 I'll tell you what Theodore Parker says to it ! ' Of course there in- 
stantly arose a tremendous clamour, and threats of killing him and throw- 
ing him over, Parker simply squared his broad chest, and looking to 
the right and left, said undauntedly, ' Kill me ? Throw me over ? You 
shall do no such thing. Now I'll tell you what I say to this matter.' 
His bravery quelled the riot at once." 



AN AMERICAN REFORMER. 



83 



a mountain town of New England, or in some settlement on a prairie 
of the West, or, when many hundreds, in a wide city, did look me in 
the face, and listen for an hour or two while I spoke, plain, right on, 
of matters familiar to their patriotic hopes, their business, and their 
bosoms, as their faces glowed in the excitement of what they heard, I 
saw the clerical prejudice was stealing out of their mind, and I left 
them other than I found them. Nay, it has often happened that a 
man has told me, by letter or by word of mouth, 1 1 was warned 
against you, but I would go and see for myself ; and when I came 
home I said, 1 After all, this is a man, and not a devil ; at least, he 
seems human. Who knows but he may be honest, even in his theo- 
logical notions ? Perhaps he is right in his religion. Priests have 
been a little mistaken sometimes before now, and said hard words 
against rather good sort of men, if we can trust the Bible. I am 
glad I heard him.' " 

This quotation, selected from his autobiography, dis- 
closes the secret of one of those careers whose results can 
hardly be appreciated because they are measurable neither 
by the pound nor by the yard. Those results indeed are 
invisible, impalpable, and your practical men do not 
hesitate to value them at nothing. Nevertheless, the 
past has seen some sowings, to all appearance lost, which 
have not failed to exercise a powerful influence over the 
destinies of the human race. How well those calculators 
know the fact ! It is mind, not matter, that governs the 
world. If the American Union comes victorious out of 
the fearful crisis in which it is engaged, it will owe the 
happy result to the awakening of a liberal and truly re- 
publican spirit and the moral fermentation of these last few 
years ; and who more than Theodore Parker contributed 
to call forth those free and liberal tendencies ? Scarcely 
would it be too much to affirm that among the valiant 
men to whom the Union owes its salvation,* Parker did 
the most to communicate to the people their generous 
and unconquerable ardour. You do not sufficiently re- 
present to yourselves the pervasive and kindling power 

* The translator, by a slight change, makes the text here speak of an 
accomplished fact, Dr lleville's prevision having been amply justified. 

6 * 



8-1 LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 

which a breath of pure and genuine religion adds to the 
regenerating views of civil and political society. And 
then, Parker did not restrict himself to preaching con- 
formably to such a spirit, he lived therein himself. 

In 1852, the always increasing numbers attracted by 
his preaching in Boston determined his friends to provide 
for him accommodation yet more spacious and convenient 
than the Melodeon. This was the Music Hall, a fine 
edifice which a philharmonic society had just built, and 
whose interior arrangements were more suited to the re- 
quirements of public worship. This new building was not 
less filled than the other, every Sunday, by an eager and 
attentive auditory. We here transcribe a note from his 
journal, dated the day of his first sermon in the Music 
Hall, November 21st, 1S52 : 

" There was a great audience, which made me feel 
less than ever. That is the sad part of looking such a 
crowd in the face, Whence shall I have bread to feed so 
many ! I am but the lad with five barley loaves and two 
small fishes. Yet I have confidence in my own preach- 
ing." 

It appears that Parker prayed with an unction and a 
depth of piety which from the beginning of the service 
captivated those of his auditors who were attracted by 
curiosity rather than a desire for edification. Then 
came the sermon, a manly utterance, which, striking out 
right and left, seized the attention, regardless of personal 
considerations, and seeking to benefit all, as remote from 
sentimental mawkishness as from the dryness of pure 
intellectualism. Original, like its author, the discourse 
would often have astonished, sometimes shocked, a Euro- 
pean unused to the free allurements of the American 
pulpit. The preacher gave in the subject he handled 
preference either to some question by which the public 
mind was at the moment agitated, or to points of social 



AN AMERICAN REFORMER. 



85 



and religious life, the most delicate and important. Or- 
dinarily he opened his discourse by an exposition of ab- 
stract principles or of well-known facts. This introduc- 
tion was generally cold and devoid of ornament. By little 
and little the sacred fire kindled up the man. Then 
came applications of what he had set forth, without much 
order, but pressing the one on the other, and captivating 
the audience — no holding back, but the whole said, and 
boldly said, in a form at once positive and poetic, such as 
is without example in our European literature. The 
same utterance often passed, and in an instant, from a 
humour which provoked smiles to a sensibility and ten- 
derness the most exquisite. You might think that in 
Parker an austere sentiment of duty, a manly energy, an 
ardent passion put at the service of momentous interests, 
would predominate, so as to stifle what we may call the 
feminine side of the heart — tenderness, sympathy, in- 
dulgence. Tou would err, and if you would form a just 
conception of his supple and varied talent, read one of 
his sermons most marked by his personality, the sermon 
on Old Age, some extracts from which will be found here- 
after. The pervasive warmth of his sentiments now and 
then occasioned incidents not a little curious. One day, 
when he was speaking of God's forgivingness, and showed 
how many means Infinite love set in movement to lift up 
even the most guilty, a man seated in the gallery sud- 
denly cried out, " Yes, yes, I know it is so." Parker 
stops ; then addressing the speaker, observes, " Yes, 
my friend, it is as you say, and you can never get so far 
away that Grod is unable to bring you back." Another 
time thunders of applause which he could not prevent, or 
rather which the people could not restrain, covered his 
words. A fugitive slave, named Shadrach, had been ar- 
rested the week before. On the Saturday he was forcibly 
set at liberty by an indignant population. There was 



86 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



much reason to fear he would be retaken by the Federal 
police. On the Sunday all hearts beat with anxiety. 
Parker entered the pulpit, holding a note in his hand : 
" "When I came among you," he said, " I expected to do 
and to endure many rough things, but I never thought I 
should have to protect one of my people against slave- 
hunters, nor to be requested to read a note such as this : 
1 The fugitive slave, Shadrach, asks for the prayers of this 
Church and of all Christian people for aid in seeking 
his liberty.' But," he added, " Shadrach has no longer 
need of our prayers. God be praised, we know he is in 
safety, already afar off, on the high road of freedom." 
Parker had himself contributed to conceal his getting 
away, and could without danger communicate the " glad 
tidings of great joy." The public conscience, relieved of an 
enormous burden, could not withhold its bursting delight. 
Several times rounds of applause reverberated over the 
hall : — but this was the only time such expressions were 
not energetically repressed by the preacher. Never did a 
man who was unpopular — at least with the majority, and 
suffering from being so — do less to recover by concession 
the ground compromised or lost by his freedom. His 
sermons were every moment directed against what he 
called " the people's sins ; " that is, the faults and the 
vices to which the Americans yield complacently, and 
which consequently find either apologist disposed to pal- 
liate the wrong, or indulgent judges inclined to ignore it. 
Nor did he spare persons of high repute when they laid 
themselves open to conscientious animadversion. While 
doing full justice to the foremost men of the Union, he 
never feared to attack them, especially when he felt called 
on to reproach them with being, from interested or am- 
bitious views, unfaithful to their avowed principles. One 
kind of religious discourse, such as those which he con- 
secrated to Quincy Adams, to Zachary Taylor, to Daniel 



AN AMERICAN REFORMER. 



87 



Webster, is unknown in Europe, and indeed would be 
impossible here. Imagine a London or Paris preacher 
ascending the pulpit the day after the demise of an 
eminent statesman, laying hold of the whole of his political 
career, and criticising it from end to end in the name of 
Christian morality, with as much severity for its aberra- 
tions as minute care to throw its virtues into full relief. 
This is what Parker did in Boston ; and to read his dis- 
course on Adams and that on Webster will suffice to con- 
vince any one that never can hardihood and impartiality 
of judgment be carried to a greater extent. "Woe to a 
Boston flavor who had set an example of intemperance. 
Woe to Zachary Taylor who had bought forty slaves in 
the years which preceded his presidency. Woe to Daniel 
Webster who had received a pension from rich merchants 
in the Xorth, who wished that able defender of liberalism 
to compose to sleep under the flowers of his rhetoric the 
growing reaction against slavery. There was one incor- 
ruptible voice in Boston. Fearlessly did it stigmatize 
:heir disgraceful misdeeds. Equally did Parker hesitate 
not to denounce the war in Mexico as unjust, disloyal, 
mean, as a national crime, committed solely for the in- 
terests of the slave party, and he appealed to the con- 
science of the nation against a false patriotism too proud 
of victories gained and territories conquered. He even 
ran great perils in thus assailing the passions of the 
multitude. In a meeting at Boston, where he was to 
speak against the war, volunteers, returned from the 
camp, got into the hall, arms in their hands. Xot the 
less did Parker describe,. in words burning with indigna- 
tion, the evil which the war had done, and the shame 
which was reflected on the Federal flag ; when vociferations 
were heard. It was the volunteers expressing their dis- 
satisfaction. " Tarn him out" they shouted. Parker turned 
toward them and put them to silence by saying to them 



88 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



simply, " Turn Mm out ? Well, what then ? " And he con- 
tinued his speech ; but he was far from moderating his 
language ; the murmurs and groanings recommenced. They 
were even accompanied with cries of a more sinister cha- 
rater: " Kill Mm ! kill Mm!" and a noise was heard as 
if of loading muskets. Parker refused to yield. " Turn 
Mm out ?" he cried with a re-echoing voice ; " I tell you 
that you shall not turn me out. Do you want to kill 
me ? Well, I will go home alone and unarmed, and not 
one of you shall touch a hair of my head." He did what 
he promised, and as he foretold, so it was. It must be 
added that never, except in the name of morality trampled 
under-foot, did he directly meddle with political affairs. 
His ceaseless desire, viz., the moral reformation of the 
people as a basis of their religious improvement, impelled 
him to oppose with similar eagerness the other causes of 
corruption and wretchedness. He was not very fond of 
temperance societies with their pledges of absolute ab- 
stinence. Nevertheless, to shelter himself against all 
possible suspicions, he consented to become a member of 
one of those associations. He thought that reformers 
ought to turn men away from the abuse, and teach them 
the rational use of fermented liquors, without which the 
task would have to be ever done over again. He insisted 
on police regulations and a diligent application of the 
law as a means of diminishing intoxication, and directly 
or indirectly he succeeded in getting excellent arrange- 
ments made. A considerable part of his efforts was de- 
voted to the inducing individuals and cities to make due 
efforts in order to diffuse the light of instruction among 
the humbler classes, and certainly he is one of those who 
most contributed to realize the magnificent display of 
schools of all kinds, of which the North may justly take 
to themselves the honour. He equally interested himself 
on behalf of the Irish paupers that encumbered the streets 



AN AMERICAN REFORMER. 



89 



of Boston, and whom he thought victims of their institu- 
tions and their superstitions much more than of their 
native heedlessness. He did much on their behalf, and 
often undertook their defence against the intolerant pre- 
judices of a narrow Americanism, and also against the 
displeasure with which the native population witnessed, 
thanks to the gentlemen of CorrJc, as from their guttural 
accent the Irish were called, the increase of the number 
of souls that received and blindly executed the word of 
command from Eome, without at all caring for the in- 
terests of their new country. Toward the end of his life, 
however, the concern he felt for them grew less, especially 
when he saw that on the question of slavery, Paddy, 
pleased to think that there were on earth human beings 
of a condition inferior to his own, always took part with 
the South in favour of its slave policy, and applauded all 
the measures that aggravated the hideous wound so dis- 
figuring to the republic. The education of girls was also 
one of his favourite subjects, and he carried on an un- 
sparing war against the prejudices which excluded women 
from scientific studies. It was from enlightened mothers 
that he expected a generation superior to the average of 
his own days. Possibly, carried away by his zeal for so 
worthy an object, he sometimes went beyond the limit 
fixed by nature as well as social organization. If he did 
well to aim at reforming the numerous abuses in the in- 
struction given to females in America, and in the legisla- 
tion which fixed their civil position, it may be doubted if 
he was on the side of right when he claimed for them a 
share in social functions now reputed to be the preroga- 
tives of the other sex. Let us elevate, let us instruct, let 
us protect woman, but, pray, let us not make her into 
man ; she would gain by the change no more than could 
man made into woman. Parker assuredly better under- 
stood his mission when he directed his genius, now 



90 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER, 



caustic, now indignant, against a venal press, an idle or 
an indulgent pulpit, senators, representatives, faithless 
to their consciences, capitalists " adoring God Dollar and 
serving him alone." It was by such preaching that his 
pulpit became one of the powers of the land. The frown- 
ing unpopularity of his early days insensibly changed into 
a kind of respectful fear in regard to that man of iron 
whom no menace could shake, and no prospect of ad- 
vantage seduce, and who ne v er before speaking asked if 
what he was going to say would please his auditors. He 
was sometimes reproached with being a minister having 
no regular Church ; he might have replied that his Church 
was America, and that he was its preacher detested indeed 
but still listened to. " This," as has been said by a 
learned theologian, himself author of very remarkable 
sermons ; " this is the true mark of a good preacher." 

But specially is it in his contest with the partisans of 
slavery that Parker showed himself worthy of admiration. 
In that line of duty we must now follow his steps. 



91 



CHAPTEE TIL 

THE QUESTION OF SLAYEEY. 

The question of slavery in the United States— How opinion in Europe 
has got wrong in its appreciation of the American war — Uncle Tom — 
Political and social consequences of slavery— Dogs protectors of public 
order — Two nations there where but for slavery only one would be — 
Prolonged apathy of the North of the Union — "W. L. Garrison — The 
fugitive slave law — Parker's growing hostility to slavery — Provisions 
and productions. 

Slavery of the coloured race was for the first time in 
the modern world abolished in 1751, under the inspiration 
of a sincere and fervent Christianity, but the abolition 
was only local. The powerful gale of liberty which 
brought the War of Independence led all the Northern 
States of America to abolish it at a later day ; the Con- 
federation did not the less allow it to continue in States 
which thought themselves obliged to preserve it. It was 
then the general feeling that it would disappear of itself 
by the act of the States which maintained it, and specially 
that it would not extend. The opposite took place. The 
hour came when the South, having always made its par- 
ticular interests depend on the continuance of slavery, 
saw itself placed in the alternative, either to endure mo- 
mentarily great losses by letting the hateful institution 
fall, or to induce the North to aid in consolidating and 
extending it. For slavery, its partisans are well aware, 
cannot live alongside a country that is free and decided 
to do nothing that resembles any alliance with the evil. 



92 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



It is a thing which must die if it cannot grow. Manu- 
facturers established themselves in the North ; the South 
complacently undertook, in return for its slave privileges, 
to favour protecting tariffs. Ere long slave labour found 
favour in the eyes of New York and Boston capitalists, 
because it produced abundantly a material requisite for 
manufacturing industry, namely, cotton, and because the 
South consumed a large portion of its products. The same 
servile labour furnished their large freights of tobacco, 
sugar, and textile materials to the innumerable Northern 
clippers, by whom they were conveyed to the markets of 
Europe. All this interchange of important secular in- 
terests soon put the conscience of the North to sleep, and 
a word of command went forth that its slumbers should 
not be disturbed. This was carried so far, that in large 
cities the directory committees of Churches enjoined on 
their preachers not to introduce the question of slavery in 
the pulpit. Doubtless there were instances of honourable 
disobedience to these selfish injunctions, but they were 
too feeble to constitute a serious opposition. 

When however some day the future shall write the 
moral history of the 19th century, it will find it very 
difficult to explain how, if conscience were stifled, self- 
interest did not sooner turn the Americans away from 
the gulf into which they fell while closing their eyes in 
regard to all measures which tended to consolidate slavery. 
The astonishment will be redoubled when it shall be per- 
ceived that even in Europe, where slavery is condemned 
by the general conscience and by the laws of truly civilized 
states, an insurrection imprudently illegal, the soul of 
which was the maintenance of slavery at all costs, found 
not only among the adherents of religious and political 
despotism, but also in manufacturing and commercial 
circles, ardent, and in no way disguised, sympathies. Tou 
may to some extent give yourself a reason for this in 



THE QUESTION OF SLAVERY. 



93 



England, where long-standing enmities caused many to see 
without displeasure their transatlantic rival weaken itself 
by division. On the continent antipathies, provoked by 
the disdainful and inconsiderate policy of Union states- 
men toward other nations, augmented the number of those 
who would have rejoiced at its dissolution. ^Rarely was 
that policy altogether the work of the Southern party, in 
whose hands the indolence of the North allowed political 
power to remain during more than 30 yea.rs. What 
specially contributed to sustain that partial but powerful 
current of opinion in Europe was the assertion, a thou- 
sand times repeated, that at the bottom the men of the 
North did not like the negroes more than those of the 
South, and even while granting them their liberty, treated 
them worse than the latter who held them in bondage. 
The speciousness there may be in this argument, open to 
question as to the fact on which it rests, ought not to 
have misled public opinion to the extent in which we have 
seen it go wrong from the commencement of the civil 
war. It is idle talk that nothing hinders the negro who 
lives in the North of the Union from leaving it if he is 
not well off there, while in the Southern States he was 
forced to remain where he was ill off. 

Strange phenomenon ! The public writers devoted to 
the interests of the South went at last so far as to place 
a garland on the head of slavery. When the famous 
novel of Uncle Tom, written by one who saw with her 
own eyes what she spoke of, made its appearance before 
the public, it was charged with exaggeration by many 
who did not take the trouble of reflecting that the true 
lesson of that book was not that the slaves, under the 
whip of greedy and cruel planters, were greatly to be 
pitied, but rather that, supposing the masters were mild 
and humane, as are the greater number of those whom 
Mrs Stowe describes, slavery is an accursed institution, 



94 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



bearing its condemnation in its inevitable consequences. 
In order to maintain it are you not compelled to take 
from the slave property, family, instruction, even modesty ? 
What has not been properly understood is that at the 
bottom slavery was the sole cause of that American civil 
war from which the whole world has suffered. Without 
doubt neither of the two parties were willing, especially 
at the beginning, to avow the fact officially, and there 
were people simple enough to fancy that millions of men 
were cutting each other's throats — these to obtain pro- 
tective tariffs, those to make free trade triumphant. As 
if it needed great deductive skill to understand that such 
a war is not possible except between two communities 
that had become deeply and bitterly hostile to one an- 
other, being no longer able to live such as they are, either 
united or side by side, and that slavery is the generative 
source of that antipathy. As if slavery in modern times 
bore different fruit from what it bore in antiquity ! 

In effect, who does not see that, despite republican 
forms, slavery has for one of its consequences to constitute 
a great territorial aristocracy which soon acquires the 
bad qualities, and, to some extent, the good ones, of its 
predecessors. Servile labour is largely remunerative only 
when it is applied to extensive properties. Moreover, it 
degrades labour itself, since it makes it the token of abject 
dependence. "Whence it follows that those who possess 
nothing become soldiers, hunters, adventurers, &c, leaving 
the lands and their culture to the aristocracy, and that 
the sons of that aristocracy which is vain-glorious, idle, 
easily growing weary of a regular and unexciting life, de- 
sire in a morbid love of distinction to become officers, 
magistrates, representatives, diplomatists, but by no means 
agriculturists, merchants, tradesmen. In the midst of 
such, those who desire to direct state affairs offer them- 
selves in great number, and you may safely presume that 



THE QUESTION OF SLAVERY. 



95 



their policy may shine by its talent and energy, but it 
will completely lack moral scrupulosity and soon moral 
integrity. When from infancy human beings are accus- 
tomed to commit, without even thinking of it, the most 
flagrant robbery that can be conceived, to take from 
others, whether by force of money, or force of muscle, or 
force of custom, that primordial property which alone 
gives to all other property its meaning and its legitimacy, 
and which is called our human personality, they may but 
too easily be led to trample under feet, as so many pre- 
judices, that which older nations respect under the title 
of the Eights of Nations. Finally, in the interior of Slave 
States, all interests turning on the fundamental institu- 
tion, men are drawn on by the force of things, and by the 
approbation of the majority, to commit any act which 
will tend to maintain it. Besides, is it not ascertained 
that the negroes are happy, the obvious interest of their 
owners being to feed them well and not to overwork 
them ? But what else is this than the interest of the 
carman who takes due care of his horses because they 
are his property ? The plea shows marvellous simplicity ! 
It cannot indeed be denied, you say, that there are brutes, 
slaves of passion, stupidly greedy of gain, who treat their 
slaves worse than their beasts of burden. But this, you 
judge, is a trifle, and need not be regarded in legislation. 
Society is always in the right, the slave always in the 
wrong. And how can it be otherwise ? A negro, who 
has committed the crime of considering himself ill-used, 
and hence takes to flight, robs the master to whom he be- 
longs ; he ought then to be treated and punished as a 
robber, and as a robber he is flogged in order to teach him 
not again to steal himself from his owner. And as a run- 
away slave is not easily re-taken, his master is obliged to 
employ a severe punishment, in order to deter others. 
Then a slave owner is not at liberty to sell a recovered 



93 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



slave at tlie same price as an obedient negro, any more 
than a horse dealer may pass off a vicious animal as a 
trustworthy one. The fugitive negro must therefore be 
branded as much as the half-savage buffalo. This is the 
only way to prevent the crime punished by all civilized 
codes under the head of " Deception as to the quality of 
the merchandise sold." The slave who knows what 
awaits him, uses his legs vigorously, and stimulated by 
the fear of punishment, not less than by the desire of 
liberty, runs so fast that he is not easily caught ; or crafty, 
as men of servile condition generally are, he conceals 
himself so well that the cleverest detectives would fail to 
lay hands on him. A pretty affair truly ! There are 
however dogs which have a keener nose for runaway 
negroes than smugglers' dogs have for custom-house 
officers on the Belgian frontier. These are a race of large 
mastiffs, strong in the jaws, and without more prejudices 
than their masters in regard to those Hocks of Ebony. 
Such animals become one of the protective institutions of 
the country. This is not irony, it is history, a history 
whose record is on high, crying for vengeance ! And 
then, in favour of slavery though you are, especially when 
you have no slaves yourself, you may feel inclined to 
loosen some links of the system. But once any link 
drops, good-bye to the whole. There is then a grave 
danger in yielding to the mass of the people power to 
make laws and to apply them. As a precaution you 
must decree that in the electoral committees, each owner 
of slaves shall have so many votes as there are heads in 
his gangs. Please to remember in this particular that 
those heads belong to men. Universal suffrage has re- 
ceived a new homage, nevertheless political power does 
not leave certain opulent families, interested in maintain- 
ing slavery no matter at w T hat price.* 

* We need not enlarge on the deplorable consequences of slavery on 



THE QUESTION OF SLAVERY. 



97 



It may now be easily conceived how it happened that 
a population spread indeed over an immense territory, 
but without natural limits ; united by language, by re- 
ligion, by common institutions, by a federal bond, guaran- 
teeing to each division of the nation much internal self- 
government ; united also by glorious and sacred recollec- 
tions, found itself at the end of some years separated into 
two sections, so hostile the one to the other as to hold it 
impossible to live together in peace. And do you not 
see how, all other things being equal, good and bad 
qualities, advantages and disadvantages of climate being 
compensated, slavery was on one side the first link of an 
iron chain, the other links of which were called contempt 
of labour, military ascendancy, cruelty, servile habits, 
servile morals, servile pleasures ; while on the other in 
virtue of affiliation not less close, liberty produced its 
natural consequences, that is to say, the development of 
well-being, of intelligence, of industry, of commerce, of 
democracy, with its susceptibilities, its philanthropic 
tendencies, its constant endeavours for the physical and 
moral elevation of disinherited classes ? # Assuredly we 
are not one of those who close their eyes to the faults 

private morality. The fact is demonstrated that, all "being weighed, the 
whites do not suffer less than the blacks. "With both the moral level 
sinks deplorably low. Xot a few Southern planters have been known to 
sell their own sons and daughters. If the reader wishes to form an exact 
idea of all that we here merely hint at, let him read an excellent work, 
rich in facts arid figures, and breathing a laudable spirit, lately published 
by Mr R. Dale Owen, under the title of " The Wrong of Slavery, the 
Pdght of Emancipation." Philadelphia, 1864. 

* It is to this difference of internal regimen that we ought to ascribe 
the success of the patrons of slavery in the commencement of the war. 
In a military point of view they were much better prepared, organized, 
and disciplined than the men of the Xorth. More able generals, a far 
greater facility of concentration, and especially measures taken by the 
Southern government before Lincoln's advent to power, did the rest. 

7 



98 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



and wrong-doings of the free States of the Union. Men 
are still far from angels, and when such a conflict bursts 
out, it is very rare that both sides have not each its share 
of sins to expiate. But we could never take part in 
human affairs were we not to enlist until a faultless army 
passed by our doors. In cases of the sort details must 
be disregarded, and you must go back to principles. 
When there you have only one thing to do ; namely, to 
determine on which side floats the banner of humanity, 
and to follow where it leads. 

"We have felt it our duty to recall these circumstances, 
that those of our readers who are not familiar with the 
American question may clearly understand the nature 
of the obstacles which Parker and his abolitionist friends 
had to overcome; and that they may be able to judge of 
the ardour, the passion which he put forth in that struggle 
in which the energies of his last years were concentrated. 

The principal ground of reproach against the North was 
that apathetic indifference in which it slumbered in po- 
litical matters, in spite of multiplied warnings from those 
who had studied the history of the world enough to per- 
ceive clearly the peril that threatened their own country. 
How often have men called practical — merchants, manufac- 
turers, agriculturists— had occasion to regret having treated 
as dreamers or crack-brained prophets men whose work is 
thinking, men who know that above pecuniary interests 
there reign great historical laws, the majesty of which no 
nation despises with impunity. It is certain that the 
great American crisis might have been prevented if, at 
the beginning, and before the South had enclosed itself in 
a pass out of which was no egress, the North had given 
utterance to the voice of its large majority, and had taken 
energetic measures for confining slavery within the nar- 
row circle in which it would have quietly died of itself 
without a compulsory abolition. On the contrary, happy 



THE QUESTION OP SLAVERY. 



99 



at being exempt from the plague in their own borders, 
absorbed in their physical labours and lucrative opera- 
tions, dazzled with its prodigious prosperity, the North 
allowed the evil to grow to such a pitch that the remedy 
became too costly and painful. Xot even did the North 
take care, as it might easily have done, to secure a ma- 
jority devoted to its principles in the councils of the 
Union. The Presidents were always from the South, or 
pledged to the partisans of slavery. The highest offices 
of the army and the navy, the federal magistracy, the 
clerks of the civil service, were overrun with Southerners. 
In 1854, of 40,000 Union functionaries 36 might be ranged 
in that category. 

However, as early as 1831 a humble printer of Bos- 
ton, William Lloyd Garrison, published a journal which 
fomented a certain abolitionist agitation. At first it 
called forth but a faint echo, enough nevertheless to ex- 
cite notice from Southern spies, who in violent terms de- 
nounced to the Massachusetts authorities the incendiary 
character of "that impertinent paper." The mayor of 
Boston took special pains to calm their alarms. It re- 
sulted from his inquiries, he wrote to them, that the 
movement was absolutely insignificant, that he had found 
only a very small number of obscure adherents, and that 
Garrison himself was a very poor writer, " living in a sort 
of hole with a negro boy for his household." " The fre- 
quent contempt of intelligent men for the small begin- 
nings of great events is," as Parker afterwards remarked, 
" an astounding circumstance. There was at one time 
some one who had not even a hole where to lay his head, 
and not the shadow of a negro boy in his service. He did 
not stand too well with the mayors and governors of his 
country. Yet that did not prevent his at last exercising 
some influence on the destinies of the world." In truth, 
notwithstanding the hole and the negro boy, the movement 

7 * 



100 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



spread. A party formed itself around that courageous 
publicist. But a long time had to pass before that party 
was able to influence the movement of public affairs in a 
marked manner. Nay, during many years, the abolitionist 
party, even in the North, had to suffer all the disad- 
vantages of being unpopular. It was considered as the 
enemy of the Union, and politicians, desirous of rising 
into power, or of retaining the power they possessed, 
found it convenient to decline all connection therewith. 
Southern agents profited by this state of opinion to 
throw the Union more and more into a direction the 
avowed end of which was universal slavery. The North 
let them have their way, or merely murmured. Men 
were found who tried to compose the Northern conscience 
by such narcotics as saying that, after all, Providence in- 
tended the black race to be enslaved to the white, that it 
was written in the Bible how that the children . of Ham 
were condemned to be slaves to the children of Shem 
and Japhet ; as if the blacks were Ham's descendants, and 
as if we were the testamentary executors of the ancient 
patriarch. Then it was added that for love of the Union 
they must let the question sleep ; not occasion disquiet 
to their Southern brethren; that slavery produced an 
enormous number of dollars ; and that all commercial in- 
terests would be compromised if that source of certain 
gain were suffered to run dry. Finally, as we have said, 
the South had succeeded in representing the lot of its 
slaves as so happy that it was asked if it was not bar- 
barous to immolate that idyllic felicity to the fanaticism 
of a few psalm-singers, and to the Utopian fancies of 
speculators who knew nothing of the facts. 

One thing however greatly annoyed the South. Every 
year, and in spite of the most cruel measures of repres- 
sion, a considerable number of slaves fled from that para- 



THE QUESTION OF SLAVERY. 101 

dise, and at the peril of their lives reached the infernal 
regions of freedom. The long-suffering of the North, had 
endured so much that the Southern planters ventured on 
one step more. In 1850 they obtained the infamous 
" Fugitive Slave Law," which by means of certain ridicu- 
lous formalities, invested any and every Southerner with 
the rights of a kidnapper (that was the word employed), 
who, whether by guile or by force, commonly by both, 
seized if he could the person of every coloured man in- 
habiting the Free States, took him before a federal judge, 
and caused his victim to be secured to him by the armed 
force of the Union, after a certain process in which every- 
thing was done to prevent the accused from escaping from 
the robber. A reward of ten dollars was offered per head 
for every kidnapped negro. "Well may the North have 
begun to ask if the requirements of its Southern associates 
were not turning into the most hateful tyranny that could 
be imagined. The publication of this abominable enact- 
ment marks the time when Parker's abolitionist crusade 
became active and ardent. His declared adhesion was a 
happy thing for the emancipation party. It procured for 
them an orator of the first order, a defender whose disin- 
terestedness was above suspicion, and who excelled in the 
art of arousing slumbering consciences. "With Parker, 
Sumner, Wendell Phillips, Beeeher Stowe, brother and 
sister, abolitionism could boast of having for organs the 
most eloquent tongues in the Union. . 

Parker's ideas on slavery had not from his youth up 
taken the same decided turn as his religious views. Not 
that he was ever a friend of that odious institution ; the 
gentle and pious Channing had already denounced in his 
own circle, and for intelligent ears everywhere, the peril, 
the shame, the immorality of slavery. But you may see 
that the young religious reformer did not yet attach par- 



102 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



ticular importance to the question. In a letter which in 

1836 he addressed from Washington to Miss Cabot we 

read what follows : 

" Plenty of negroes one sees here, terribly blue, all the week. I 
saw in the paper of to-day an advertisement offering cash for 700 
negroes of both sexes. That sounds harsh to Northern ears. They 
are a queer set, those negroes ; some of them are very merry, dancing 
and capering about on the side-walk as if they had nought to do but 
dance. I saw two negro lovers walking arm-in-arm, cooing and bill- 
ing, as if they could not restrain their joy in one another's presence. 
Why should colour prevent them ? " 

Manifestly the institution is theoretically repugnant 
to him, but he is not grieved at seeing human beings in 
the condition of slaves. But in the degree in which he 
reflected on the destinies of his country and the moral 
obstacles which stood in the way of their glorious accom- 
plishment, he saw the gulf grow broader and deeper 
which threatened to swallow up the honour and the con- 
science of the American Union. 

In 1842 the evil appeared to him so serious that he 
entreated a lady friend, who was leaving for Georgetown 
in Virginia, to make careful inquiries on the spot, and to 
communicate to him what she learnt. From 1845, the 
year of the annexation of the Texas, he never let an op- 
portunity slip of thundering against the great " sin of the 
nation." The more time went on, the more he saw the 
storm thicken, and the great majority of his fellow-citi- 
zens go forwards to meet it, these with the blindness of 
selfishness, those with the blindness of frivolity. His 
correspondence and his discourses abound in prophetic 
intuitions of the great cataclysm which the sages of ma- 
terialist politics hardened their hearts not to see. In 
1851 he wrote what follows to Mr Allen : 

" I think if the slave power continue to press their demand as 
they have done for a few years past, that there will be a civil war, 
which will either decide the Union or else extirpate slavery. The 
time is not come for fighting. How soon it will come nobody 



THE QUESTION OF SLAVERY. 



103 



knows ; it may not come at all. God grant it do not. But this is 
dpx^l uciviov, a\\' ov7T(o kariv to tsXoq (the beginning of labour pangs, 
but the end is not yet } Matt. xxiv. 6, 8)." 

In May, 1854, at the time of the Crimean "War, he 
wrote to Professor Desor : 

" The South takes side with Eussia. Alone of all Europe she never 
found fault with American slavery ; she sympathizes with us. This 
is what the Southern journals have said openly all the winter. We 
must have a dreadful chastisement one day. I suppose it will come 
from our towns, from civil war." 

About the same time he wrote to Mr Seward, after- 
ward Secretary of State of the Union, Lincoln's friend 
and counsellor, a letter of rare insight, and of which we 
transcribe the greater part : 

" It seems to me that the country has now got to such a pass that 
the people must interfere, and take things out of the hands of the 
politicians who now control them, or else the American State will be 
lost. Allow me to show in extenso what I mean. Here are two 
distinct elements in the nation, viz., Freedom and Slavery. The two 
are hostile in nature, and therefore mutually invasive ; both are or- 
ganized in the institutions of the land. These two are not equi- 
librious ; so the nation is not a figure of equilibrium. It is plain (to 
me) that these two antagonistic forms cannot long continue in this 
condition. There are three possible modes of adjusting the balance ; 
all conceivable : — 

" 1, There may be a separation of the two elements. Then each 
may form a whole, equilibrious, and so without that cause of dissolu- 
tion in itself, and have a national unity of action, which is indis- 
pensable. Or, — 

' ; 2. Freedom may destroy Slavery ; then the whole nation con- 
tinues as a harmonious whole, with national unity of action, the re- 
sult of national unity of place. Or, — 

" 3. Slavery may destroy Freedom, and then the nation become 
an integer — only a unit of despotism. This, of course, involves a 
complete revolution of all the national ideas and national institutions. 
It must be an industrial despotism ; a strange anomaly. Local self- 
government must give place to centralization of national power ; 
the State Courts be sucked up by that enormous sponge, the Su- 
preme Court of the United States, and individual liberty be lost in 
the monstrous mass of democratic tyranny. Then America goes 
down to utter ruin, covered with worse shame than is heaped on 
Sodom and Gomorrah. For we also, with horrid indecency, shall 



104 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



have committed the crime against nature, in our Titanic lust of 
wealth and power. 

" 1. Now I see no likelihood of the first condition being fulfilled. 
Two classes rule the nation ; 1. the mercantile men, who want money, 
and 2. the political men, who want power. There is a strange una- 
nimity between these two classes. The mercantile men want money 
as a means of power ; the political men want power as a means of 
money. Well, while the Union affords money to the one and power 
to the other, both will be agreed, will work together to ' save the 
Union.' And as neither of the two has any great political ideas, or 
reverence for the higher law of God, both will unite in what serves 
the apparent interest of these two — that will be in favour of Slavery, 
and of centralized power." 

At the end of the lettei he announces his intention, 
with a view to consider of means for warding off the 
danger, to take part in a grand convention of the free 
States convened at Buffalo, and he closes by assuring his 
correspondent of the confidence he felt in him " in these 
days of peril for liberty." 

In 1856, in a letter written to Miss H., then in Europe, 

we read as follows : 

" There are two constitutions in America, one written on parch- 
ment and deposited at Washington ; the other written also on parch- 
ment, but on a drum-head. It is to the latter we shall have to 
appeal, and that very soon. I am making all my pecuniary arrange- 
ments in the prevision of a civil war " 

Here follows a fragment from a discourse delivered 

the same year : 

" We are going on toward a civil war worse than that of the 
Crimea. How long will it last ? i Until slavery has thrown liberty 
on the ground,' say our Southern masters ; and we reply energetic- 
ally, c Until liberty has driven slavery out of America.' " 

Passage from another discourse, preached in 1858 : 

" We have too much neglected our militia ; we may want soldiers 
at a moment when we least think so." 

Extract from a letter written from Eome, in 1859, to 
Mr Erancis J ackson : 

" The American people will have to inarch to rather severe music, 
I think, and it is better for them to face it in season. A few years 



THE QUESTION OF SLAVERY. 



105 



ago it did not seem difficult first to check slavery, and then to end it 
without any bloodshed. I think this cannot be done now. nor ever 
in the future. All the great charters of Humanity have been writ 
in blood. I once hoped that of American Democracy would be en- 
grossed in less costly ink ; but it is plain, now, that our pilgrimage 
must lead through a Red Sea, wherein many a Pharaoh will go under 
and perish. Alas ! that we are not wise enough to be just, or just 
enough to be wise, and so gain much at small cost ! ' ' 

A portion of a letter written from Rome in the same 
year, to Miss Osgood: 

" I do not wonder at Captain Brown's attempt at Harper's Ferry : 
it is only the beginning, the end is not yet. But such is my confi- 
dence in democratic institutions that I do not fear the result. There 
is a glorious future for America, but on the other side of the Red 
Sea" 

These citations do honour to the keenness of Parker's 
foresight. They also explain to us the devouring zeal he 
put forth in opposition to a plague of which he, before 
others, saw so vividly both the nearness and the horrors. 



106 



CHAPTEE VIII. 

THE KIDNAPPERS. 

The Charleston Courier — Black fugitives — Committees of Vigilance — 
The underground railway — Conscience and law — William and Ellen 
Craft — Marriage of the proscribed — Apology of an abolitionist minis- 
ter — Shadrach — Thomas Sims — Letter to the Syracusans — Anthony 
Burns — A meeting at Faneuil Hall — A blow missing its mark — A ran- 
somed slave — Judicial prosecutions. 

Long would be the list of all the discourses delivered 
by Theodore Parker against slavery. The Southern press 
was eager in denouncing that mad parson, who thus kept 
howling at the sacred ark. The Charleston Courier dis- 
tinguished itself by the bitterness of its attacks. In reply 
Parker satisfied himself with publishing the advertise- 
ments of negroes offered to be sold by public auction like 
other merchandise, which were contained in the number 
in which he had been so coarsely assailed. Here were 
offered bargains of negroes, "old but vigorous," "fine 
and lively ; " there, " valuable negroes ; " iu another part, 
" children nine years old," " four years," even " six 
months;" further on, " an intelligent dark woman." In 
the same column and mixed up with the foregoing the 
ensuing might be read : On sale, " oxen and stallions," 
" a young buffalo and his harness," " a good cook, in the 
flower of his age." 

Parker's answer sufficed. 

His opposition to slavery led him more than once 
from theoretical controversy to physical struggle. We 



THE KIDNAPPERS. 



107 



have mentioned the painful impression which the passing 
of the Fugitive Slave Law produced from one end of the 
Northern States to another. The able statesmen of the 
South had not foreseen this, at least in the degree in 
which it showed itself from the very first. Trhen you 
have hardened yourself in disdaining the sympathetic 
affections of human nature, you forget that in other 
people they may still remain very vivid, and you no longer 
count them among the serious forces whose power of re- 
sistance you have to encounter. Imagine the inexpress- 
ible anguish which suddenly seized thousands of coloured 
people who had long lived peacefully in the towns and 
villages of the Xorth, not much loved by the white popu- 
lation, but far more at their ease in the open atmosphere 
of liberty than in the old house of bondage. Many of 
them had got together a little property, had married, had 
done well, and that honestly. All of them laboured and 
freely filled functions, subaltern indeed, but not so badly 
remunerated, and which a proud Yankee would have been 
unwilling to undertake. They were domestics, clerks, 
shoemakers, tailors, &c. Like the whites, they were pro- 
tected by the law ; they could procure for their children 
the benefits of education, and if white society was all but 
hermetically sealed against them, Christian charity min- 
istered to their necessities. But the infamous law once 
passed, everything was changed as if by a clap of thunder. 
Any moment each one of them might by the authority of 
Federal law be apprehended and sent back to his former 
master to undergo severe bodily chastisement, and to be 
consigned to a worse condition of slavery than ever. In 
the three days which followed the signing of the bill by 
the President more than forty ex-slaves fled from Boston. 
An exode of the same kind commenced in other cities. 

Then did the honest people of the Xorth begin to feel 
themselves seized with one of those Anglo-Saxon fits of 



108 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



indignation which resemble a tide rising under the im- 
pulse of a yet distant tempest. At the first moment, you 
may think them inoffensive, but by little and little the 
hurricane unchains itself, when it pours forth furious 
billows, which no power in the world can stay. 

In many places Indignation Meetings were held, and 
committees of vigilance were organized. The task of the 
latter was to prevent the arrest of fugitive slaves, or, when 
arrested, to furnish them with such legal aid as might 
prevent their being sent back into captivity. The Southern 
slave-hunters soon discovered that it was difficult and 
sometimes dangerous to carry on their traffic in the Free 
States. The opinion spread among the blacks, as well as 
the whites, that the law could not be executed, and that 
it would remain a dead letter. "With this end in view the 
famous " Underground Bailway," which played so import- 
ant a part in the history of slavery in the States, was or- 
ganized. Its object was to furnish secret aid by which 
fugitive slaves might escape the hands of the kidnappers, 
the officers of police, and the blood-hounds set on foot to 
pursue and seize them. Less precautions have been taken, 
less mystery has been practised, to overturn dynasties full 
of suspicion and armed from top to toe, than to facilitate 
the passage of those pitiable runaways into Canada. What 
a disgrace for the American Republic that human beings 
not even accused of crime, should during several years 
wait for the instant when touching soil subject to her 
Britannic Majesty, they could breathe at ease and exclaim, 
At last I am free ! Every year, down to the outbreak of 
the civil war, nearly a thousand fugitives profited by the 
underground railway. 

It must not, however, be imagined that this reaction 
of popular opinion was already universal, or that it was 
powerful enough to neutralize the efforts of the opposite 
party. The inclination to concede to the South was of 



THE KIDNAPPERS. 



109 



too long standing for things to admit of a change so early 
and so widely spread. In the rural districts and in the 
small towns the indignation was general. But the bulk 
of the black population was not in them. In the large 
towns where it was much condensed there was by its side 
a white mob, consisting mainly of Irishmen, who saw no 
inconvenience in the fact that the execution of the law 
had the effect of raising certain salaries. This mob, more- 
over, was the blind instrument of high political and com- 
mercial influences which attached great importance to the 
laws being carried into effect. Daniel "Webster, the most 
eminent politician of the ^orth, who aspired to the 
honours of the Presidency, wishing to conciliate the sup- 
port of the South, put forth all the resources of his talents 
to persuade his fellow- citizens not to encourage the 
abolitionists, and to resign themselves to the fugitive 
slave enactments out of respect for the law and for love 
of the Union. Sad apostasy of a man endowed with rare 
merit, who belied the liberalism of his youth under the 
fascination of that presidential chair from which Southern 
ingratitude and his own approaching death excluded him 
for ever. It is easy to conceive the embarrassment ex- 
perienced by the honest people of the Xorth to whom it 
had just been said, " It is a severe law, nevertheless a 
law it is, and every good citizen is bound to obey the law. 
Respect for law is an Anglo-Saxon virtue." # Then the 
South began to utter threats of secession if regard was 
not paid to what it called its rights. There were even, 
especially in the pulpits of the large cities, preachers 
who, to the delight of the local authorities and the chief 
men of their churches, represented obedience to the in- 
famous law as a duty toward Grod. Owing to this 
neutralization, half honest, half selfish, of the efforts of 



* See Xo. 5 of tlie Extracts at the end. 



110 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



the committees, about 200 arrests took place in the 
Northern States during the six years which followed the 
promulgation of the law. This is little in comparison 
with what the slavery-mongers had hoped for ; but taken 
in itself the figure is by no means inconsiderable. Of 
the number a dozen kidnapped slaves were delivered by 
popular indignation ; some others succeeded in legally 
establishing their freedom. The remainder were sent 
back into the South and again put into chains. Boston 
was one of the first Northern cities that organized a 
Committee of Vigilance, and Theodore Parker was one of 
the first in Boston to take part in its deliberations and 
endeavours. He was soon made its president. Then came 
the moment when his words were to pass into deeds. 

Kidnappers arrived in Boston in October, 1850. They 
bore warrants to arrest two runaway slaves of Georgia, a 
young man named Craft and his companion Ellen. The 
young people lived quietly on their labour and formed 
part of Parker's Church. The Southern agents thought 
it of special consequence to consolidate the authority of 
the new law by a striking capture, effected in even the 
stronghold of abolitionism. The young people were forth- 
with placed under the protection of the Committee of 
Vigilance. They knew what awaited them if they were 
arrested — cruel punishment for the man, a brothel for the 
woman, who was young. The population of Boston, 
aroused by the Committee, had decided not to allow the 
theft to be committed. The kidnappers tried to draw 
their prey into a snare. Their guile was defeated. But 
they could make a second effort, and at the worst, the 
Federal police were obliged to give them effectual aid. 
Parker concealed Ellen in his own home. Thereby he 
made himself liable to a fine of a thousand dollars and 
imprisonment for six months. The young woman re- 
mained in his house nearly a week. Her husband had 



THE KIDNAPPERS. 



Ill 



armed himself, and owing to support from the people, was 
able to move np and down in the city. An extract from 
Parker's journal will show the sentiments by which he 
was animated at the moment : 

" I am not a man who loves violence ; I respect the sacredness of 
human life, but this I say, solemnly, that I will do all in my power 
to rescue any fugitive slave from the hands of any officer who at- 
tempts to return him to bondage. I will resist him as gently as I 
know how. but with such strength as I can command ; I will ring 
the bells and alarm the town : I will serve as head, as foot, or as 
hand to any body of serious and earnest men, who will go with me, 
with no weapons but their hands, in this work. I will do it as 
readily as I would lift a man out of the water, or pluck him from the 
teeth of a wolf or snatch him from the hands of a murderer. What 
is a fine of a thousand dollars, and gaoling for six months, to the 
liberty of a man ? My money perish with me if it stand between me 
and the eternal law of God ! " 

Meanwhile he was compelled to seek protection in 
arms himself, a report being in circulation that his house 
was to be entered by night. But after having let the 
kidnappers and the policemen know that whoever should 
make their way into his house would do so at the peril of 
their lives, he went to the hotel where the kidnappers 
lodged, and, in a personal interview, set before their eyes 
so dark a picture of the feelings of the population in re- 
gard to them that they judged it prudent to decamp by 
the first train. 

During this time the Committee of Yigilance had col- 
lected a sum of money sufficient to pay the passage of the 
two proscripts to England, and to aid them to settle in 
London. Until they were embarked under the protection 
of the British flag it was to be feared that the pro-slavery 
party would take their revenge. AVilliam and Ellen had 
for years lived together as man and wife, but it was after the 
negro fashion, the Southern planters not choosing to legiti- 
mate the civil condition of their human cattle. Before they 
left they desired to be married conformably to the laws 



112 



LIFE OF THEODOBE PARKER. 



of the United States. Parker united them. What he did 
on the occasion may be declared in his own words. 

" Before the marriage ceremony I always advise the young couple 
of the duties of matrimony, making such remarks as suit the peculiar 
circumstances and character of the parties. I told them what I 
usually tell all bridegrooms and brides. Then I told Mr Craft 
that their position demanded peculiar duties of him. He was an 
outlaw ; there was no law which protected his liberty in the United 
States ; for that, he must depend on the public opinion of Boston, 
and on himself. If a man attacked him, intending to return him to 
slavery, he had a right, a natural right, to resist the man unto death ; 
but he might refuse to exercise that right for Jiimself, if he saw fit, 
and suffer himself to be reduced to slavery rather than kill or even 
hurt the slave-hunter who should attack him. But his wife was de- 
pendent on him for protection ; it was his duty to protect her, a duty 
which it seemed to me he could not decline. So I charged him, if 
the worst came to the worst, to defend the life and the liberty of his 
wife against any slave-hunter at all hazards, though in doing so he 
dug his own grave and the grave of a thousand men. 

" Then came the marriage ceremony ; then a prayer such as the 
occasion inspired. Then I noticed a Bible lying on one table and a 
sword on the other. I took the Bible, put it into William's right 
hand, and told him the use of it. It contained the noblest truths in 
the possession of the human race, &c., it was an instrument he was 
to use to help save his own soul, and his wife's soul, and charged 
him to use it for its purpose, &c. I then took the sword (it was a 
' Californian knife ; ' I never saw such a one before, and am not well 
skilled in such things) ; I put that in his right hand, and told him if 
the worst came to the worst to use that to save his wife's liberty, or 
her life, if he could effect it in no other way. I told him that I hated 
violence, that I reverenced the sacredness of human life, and thought 
there was seldom a case in which it was justifiable to take it ; that 
if he could save his wife's liberty in no other way, then this would 
be one of the cases, and as a minuter of religion I put into his hands 
these two dissimilar instruments, one for the body, if need were — one 
for his soul at all events. Then I charged him not to use it except 
at the last extremity, to bear no harsh and revengeful feelings 
against those who once held him in bondage, or such as sought to 
make him and his wife slaves even now. ' Nay,' I said, ' if you can- 
not use the sword in defence of your wife's liberty without hating 
the man you strike, then your action will not be without sin.' 

" I gave the same advice I should have given to white men under 
the like circumstances — as, escaping from slavery in Algiers." 

The young couple succeeded in quitting the States 



THE KIDNAPPERS. 



113 



and in reaching England. This took place in 1851, the 
year of the first Great Exhibition. Crowds flocked to the 
Crystal Palace to see the Crafts. The Xorth American 
Union, which shone bat moderately in that industrial 
competition, were however able to exhibit to the eyes of 
the "Old World" a truly indigenous product, namely, 
two rescued slaves who sang God save the Queen, to thank 
Heaven for having caused the slave-hounds to lose their 
scent. The incident was recited by Parker to his sus- 
ceptible fellow-citizens in that caustic tone which marked 
his eloquence. Still better, he wrote a letter to President 
Eillmore, to tell him what he himself had done in order to 
remain faithful to his religion, that is to say, to his respect 
for God's laws. He received no reply, but it was^not 
thought advisable to have them pursued. At a conference 
of Boston ministers, held in May of the same year, 1851, 
Parker offered his apology of the conduct which he, as 
minister, had observed in regard to the Crafts. His 
adversaries bitterly reproached him with being a violator 
of the laws of his country, and with encouraging their in- 
fraction both by word and by example. He defended him- 
self so effectively as to take from his aggressors all desire 
to revive the subject. Let us cite at least the termination 
of that vigorous discourse. 

" I have in my church black men, fugitive slaves. They are the 
crown of my apostleship, the seal of my ministry. It becomes me to 
look after their bodies in order to 'save their souls.' This law has 
brought us into the most intimate connection with the sin of slavery. 
I have been obliged to take my own parishioners into my house to 
keep them out of the clutches of the kidnapper. Yes. gentlemen, I 
have been obliged to do that ; and then to keep my doors guarded by 
day as well as by night. Yes, I have had to arm myself. I have 
written my sermons with a pistol in my desk, — loaded, a cap on the 
nipple, and ready for action. Yea, with a drawn sword within reach 
of my right hand. This I have done in Boston ; in the middle of 
the nineteenth century ; been obliged to do it to defend the [inno- 
cent] members of my own church, women as well as men ! 

8 



114 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



" You know that I do not like fighting. I am no non-resistant, 
4 that nonsense never went down with me.' But it is no small mat- 
ter which will compel me to shed human blood. But what could I 
do ? I was born in the little town where the fight and bloodshed of 
the Revolution began. The bones of the men who first fell in that 
war are covered by the monument at Lexington, it is ' sacred to 
liberty and the rights of mankind:' those men fell 'in the sacred 
cause of God and their country.' This is the first inscription that I 
ever read. These men were my kindred. My grandfather drew the 
first sword in the Revolution ; my fathers fired the first shot ; the 
blood which flowed there was kindred to this which courses in my 
veins to-day. Besides that, when I write in my library at home, on 
the one side of me is the Bible which my fathers prayed over, their 
morning and evening prayer, for nearly a hundred years. On the 
other side there hangs the firelock my grandfather fought with in 
the old French war, which he carried at the taking of Quebec, which 
lie zealously used at the battle of Lexington, and beside it is another, 
a trophy of that war, the first gun taken in the Revolution, taken 
also by my grandfather. With these things before me, these symbols ; 
with these memories in me, when a parishioner, a fugitive from 
slavery, a woman, pursued by the kidnappers, came to my house, 
what could I do less than take her in and defend her to the last ? 
But who sought her life — or liberty 1 A parishioner of my brother 
Gannett came to kidnap a member of my church; Mr Gannett 
preaches a sermon to justify the fugitive slave law, demanding that 
it should be obeyed ; yes, calling on his church members to kidnap 
mine, and sell them into bondage for ever. Yet all this while Mr 
Gannett calls himself ' a Christian,' and me an 1 Infidel ; 9 his doctrine 
is ' Christianity,' mine only ' Infidelity,' ' Deism, at the best ! ' 

" 0 my brothers, I am not afraid of men, I can offend them. I 
care nothing for their hate, or their esteem. I am not very careful 
of my reputation. But I should not dare to violate the eternal law 
of God. You have called me ' Infidel.' Surely I differ widely 
enough from you in my theology. But there is one thing I cannot 
fail to trust; that is, the infinite God, Father of the white man, 
Father also of the white man's slave. I should not dare violate His 
laws come what may come ; — should you ? Nay, I can love nothing 
so well as I love my God." 

The pro-slavery party of Boston felt not a little dis- 
concerted by the failure of its first attempt. Their South- 
ern friends resolved to have their, revenge at any price. 
Their measures this time were secretly taken. A black, by 
name Shadrach, was apprehended in Boston on the 15th 
of February, 1851, and placed before the tribunal which 



THE KIDNAPPERS. 



115 



was to replace him in the hands of his former masters. 
Again the law was more feeble than public opinion. Amid 
applause from the people a band of coloured men rushed 
into the court and carried Shadrach off even before the 
police saw what was the nature of the transaction. A 
placard affixed to all the walls of the city by the committee 
over which Parker presided had heated men's minds. 

Proceedings were taken against Shadrach's liberators. 
The legal members of the Vigilance Committee gave the 
accused the benefit of their counsels. A formal charge 
could be got up only against the leader of the liberating 
band, a young mulatto, named Eobert Morris, a law 
student. He received a unanimous acquittal from the 
jury. 

This second defeat exasperated the patrons of slavery. 
It must be stated that at the time the Federal power, the 
post-office, the police, the army — everything was at the 
disposal of the party. The more the opinion of honest 
Northerners rose in hostility against the execution of the 
iniquitous law, the more the self-love of the Southern 
slave-mongers became interested in braving and over- 
coming it. Boston contained more than 9000 men of 
colour, and more than a year had passed since the law 
was promulgated without yielding the small success of a 
single captive. The failure became intolerable. A regular 
plot was laid to avenge the authority of law at the expense 
of a poor negro named Thomas Sims, who was kidnapped 
in the streets of Boston on the night of the 3rd of April, 
1851. Passers-by attempted to interfere, but they were 
induced to desist by the statement that Sims was seized, 
not as a fugitive slave, but as a disturber of the public 
peace. He was immediately taken before the tribunal 
without being able to obtain a verdict from a jury ; and, 
although the laws of Massachusetts required such a pre- 
liminary, he was condemned. A herd posted in the court 

8 * 



116 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



for the purpose, applauded the judgment. But, despite 
the imposing forces arrayed to intimidate the people, the 
police durst not send off their victim in open day. Profit- 
ing by the veil of night, however, they stealthily put their 
prisoner on board a vessel ready to sail. Some days after 
he was put on shore at Savannah and thrown into prison, 
where he suffered whipping several times. This is the 
last that is known of the unhappy man. 

Great indignation prevailed in Boston. For the first 
time the legal crime of man-stealing had been committed 
in the streets of that proud city. A few days after, the 
public conscience was avenged by Theodore Parker in his 
famous discourse entitled The Chief Sins of the People * 
The business was passing beyond the region of words. A 
year later an eminent and decided enemy of slavery, 
Charles Sumner, one of Parker's friends, was made a 
member of that American Senate in which he was to 
renew the tradition of ancient virtues by the courageous 
energy with which he planted, in open Congress, and in 
face of the opposite party, now all-powerful, that banner 
of emancipation which to-day floats victorious above the 
counsels of the Union. The slave-hunters dared not 
forthwith repeat their insolent defiance to the public 
opinion of Boston. The next year, on the anniversary of 
Sims's extradition, Parker delivered in a public sitting of 
the Committee of Vigilance, another speech, replete with 
facts and brilliant with eloquence, which produced a deep 
impression. Among other remarkable things it contained 
an overwhelming application of the best-known passages 
of the New Testament : 

" Out of the iron house of bondage, a man, guilty of no crime 
but love of liberty, fled to the people of Massachusetts. He came to 
us a wanderer, and Boston took him in to an unlawful jail ; hungry, 
and she fed him with a felon's meat ; thirsty, she gave him the gall 



* See the end of the volume. 



THE KIDNAPPERS. 



117 



and vinegar of a slave to drink ; naked, she clothed him with chains : 
sick and in prison, he cried for a helper, and Boston sent him a 
marshal and a commissioner; she set him between kidnappers, 
among the most infamous of men, and they made him their slave. 
Poor and in chains, the government of the nation against him, he 
sent round to the churches his petition for their prayers ; — the 
churches of commerce they gave him their curse : he asked of us the 
sacrament of freedom, in the name of our God ; and in the name of 
their Trinity, the Trinity of money, — Boston standing as godmother 
at the ceremony, — in the name of their God they baptized him a 
slave. The New England church of commerce said, ' Thy name is 
Slave. I baptize thee in the name of the golden eagle, and of the 
silver dollar, and of the copper cent.' " 

This event forced the Vigilance Committee to redouble 
their efforts. Evidently their best tactics were to send 
those who were threatened with capture off before legal 
measures could be taken against them. The plan suc- 
ceeded more than once. In this way 400 persons of 
colour were enabled to escape into Canada within the 
space of a single year. Moreover the several Committees 
of Vigilance combined with a view to mutual aid. In 
other places besides Boston, e.g. Syracuse (New York), 
slaves taken by guile were forcibly delivered by the 
people aroused by the tocsin. Parker wrote to the 
Syracusans a letter of congratulation, in which among 
other passages full of passion and irony were these words : 

" The Fugitive Slave Bill is one of the most iniquitous statutes 
enacted in our time ; it is only fit to be broken. In the name of justice, 
I call upon all men who love law, to violate and break this Fugitive 
Slave Bill ; to do it 1 peaceably if they can ; forcibly if they must.' We 
can make it like the Stamp Act of the last century, which all Britain 
could not enforce against disobedient Americans. I do not suppose 
this can, in all cases, be done without individual suffering ; loss of 
money, imprisonment, that must be expected. Freedom is not 
bought with dust. I think Christianity cost something once. I 
mean the Christianity of Christ ; there is another sort of ' Chris- 
tianity ' which costs nothing — and is dear even at that price." 

These fatiguing occupations were added to all those 
which we have previously enumerated. Parker suffered 
greatly from the impossibility of carrying on his scholarly 



118 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



studies in the midst of this continual storm, but he re- 
signed himself to the duty of the day and the hour, post- 
poning to a less agitated period the composition of several 
voluminous works which he had long contemplated. 
Meanwhile the slave party pursued in Congress its tri- 
umphant career, and presented the Kansas Nebraska 
Bill, the success of which struck another blow at the 
liberal principles and the rights of the Free States. Un- 
happily that took place which so often takes place when 
there is a protracted struggle between a population 
animated with generous sentiment but not willing to be 
carried into revolution, and an organized power, master 
of social influences, material forces, and vulgar interests ; 
if only that power takes care not to exasperate too much 
the feelings which are hostile to it, it may almost without 
fail calculate on the lassitude of people's minds and the 
gradual cooling down of early passions. 

Thus events proceeded in America during the years 
1852 — 1854. The original ardour displayed against the 
Fugitive Slave Law had lessened, particularly at Boston. 
Prom the time of the seizure of Thomas Sims, the slave 
agents prudently allowed the brutal law to sleep, as they 
found the Vigilance Committee ever ready to counteract 
their doings. On the other hand, the ascendency which 
the South owed to their cohesion, their audacity, their 
effrontery, in time imposed on many Northern people. 
Accordingly, as soon as the Nebraska Bill was passed, the 
pro-slavery power resolved to employ its new victory for 
the consolidation of former ones. Another poor negro 
was arrested on the 24th of May, 1854, under a false 
charge of theft. He was put into irons, while awaiting 
the force of a trial which was sure to send him back to 
his soi-disant owner, Colonel Suttle, of Alexandria, in 
Virginia. Parker immediately set the Committee of 
Vigilance in movement. He himself went to visit the 



THE KIDNAPPERS. 



119 



unhappy prisoner, and succeeded in getting his chains re- 
moved ; but he was not restored to liberty. At the same 
time an "indignation meeting" was convened at Faneuil 
Hall, the ordinary Forum of the Boston citizens. The 
crisis was serious. In view of certain possibilities Federal 
soldiers guarded the approaches to the prison, and, as was 
said, order had been given to shoot the prisoner rather 
than let him escape. The Federal authority had also 
concentrated troops around the city. Finally, the militia 
were under arms. All this array to reduce a single negro 
into slavery ! An indignant multitude filled Faneuil 
Hall. Their ardour was carried beyond bounds by Parker's 
burning words : 

" ' There is no North,' said Mr Webster. There is none. The 
South goes clear up to the Canada line. Xo, gentlemen : there is no 
Boston, to-day. There was & Boston, once. Xow, there is a Xorth 
suburb to the city of Alexandria, — that is what Boston is. And you 
and I, fellow-subjects of the State of Virginia, — (Cries of ' Xo, no ! ' 
' Take that back again ! ') I will take it back when you show me the 
fact is not so. Men and brothers, I am not a young man ; I have 
heard hurrahs and cheers for liberty many times ; I have not seen 
a great many deeds done for liberty. I ask you, are we to have deeds 
as well as words ? ' ' 

Then he told his auditors that the municipal authorities 
were leagued with the slave dealers, that on the morrow 
their fellow-citizen Anthony Burns (the name of the 
apprehended negro) was to be sent back into the land of 
bondage, and that it depended on them to prevent this 
fresh insult and this additional crime. 

u Gentlemen : I am a clergyman and a man of peace. I love 
peace. But there is a means, and there is an end ; liberty is the end, 
and sometimes peace is not the means towards it. Xow, I want to 
ask you what you are going to do ? (A voice : ' Shoot, shoot ! ') 
There are ways of managing this matter without shooting anybody. 
Be sure that these men who have kidnapped a man in Boston are 
cowards — every mother's son of them ; and if we stand up there re- 
solutely, and declare that this man shall not go out of the city of 
Boston, without shooting a gun — (Cries of 'That's it!' and great 
applause) — then he won't go back. Xow, I am going to propose 



120 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



that when you adjourn, it be to meet at Court Square to-morrow 
■morning, at nine o'clock. (A large number of hands were raised, 
but many voices cried out, < Let's go to-night ! ' 4 Let's pay a visit to 
the slave-catchers at the Kevere House ; put that question.') Do you 
propose to go to the Kevere House to-night ? then show your hands ! 
(Some hands were held up.) It is not a vote. We shall meet at 
Court Square, at nine o'clock to-morrow morning." 

Parker's intention was to call forth a demonstration, 
pacific indeed, but so imposing in number and determin- 
ation as to make the return of Burns into servitude im- 
possible. Unfortunately some over-heated persons lost 
patience, and even before ths meeting was dispersed an 
attack was made on the prison. At first the soldiers were 
driven off, the prison-gates were broken open, and one of 
the Marshal's force was killed. When, however, the 
soldiers discovered that the assailants were small in num- 
ber, they began to fire at them indiscriminately. Seized 
with panic at this the people fled in all directions. The 
next day the city bristled with troops. The day was lost, 
and Parker's pacific plan was frustrated. 

The abolitionists' defeat emboldened their adversaries, 
and, as is usual, the hesitating many placed themselves on 
the side of success. Eurns was restored to his master, 
although Parker and his friends offered a large sum of 
money for his ransom. Insurrectionary proposals were 
made to the committee, but they shrank from the prospect 
of a greater effusion of blood. Besides, what was wanted 
was not to dissolve the Union, but to save it, and to save 
it the abolitionists felt they must remain in it. Events 
of this nature, however much to be regretted in themselves, 
had the great advantage of awakening public opinion, and 
strengthening the reaction against the preponderance of 
the Southern faction. Did Burns's master understand 
the moral bearing of the robbery which had been com- 
mitted in his name ? Or as Burns was intelligent and 
possessed of a certain eloquence, though devoid of educa- 



THE KIDNAPPERS. 



121 



tion, did Colonel Suttle think it imprudent to have on 
his estate an effective talker who could tell what he had 
seen and heard in a land of freedom ? This, however, is 
certain, that hardly had Burns been placed in his hands 
when he lent an ear to the offers of purchase which he 
had previously rejected. The protectors of Burns, think- 
ing he might make a good preacher for the men of his 
blood, placed him in the Oberlin College in Ohio. He 
repaid the sacrifices which had been made on his behalf 
by his zeal to learn all he was taught. There remain in 
letters left by Theodore Parker some lines from him 
testifying his gratitude and the hope he cherished of 
contributing to the elevation of his people. Appointed 
minister of a society of coloured men at Saint Catherine, he 
discharged his duties with admirable devotedness, and died 
at his work in the year 1S62. If he had remained a slave, 
some one may say, he would perhaps have been alive still. 
Probably so, considering that a sagacious owner would 
have felt it to be unprofitable to overwork his slave any 
more than his ox or his ass. The sole question to be 
answered is, which is preferable, a degraded life or a 
Christian death. Slavery -partisans will answer it accord- 
ing to their own views ; for us, we say and say again, with 
the Old Sergeant of the popular poet, 
Ce n'est pas tout de naitre : 
Dieu, mes enfans, vous donne un beau trepas ! * 

"While Burns was in prison at Boston, Parker, instead 
of an ordinary sermon, preached what he called A Lesson 
for the day, t in which he gave free vent to his indignant 
grief, and stigmatized, as it deserved, the conduct of the 
Boston magistrates. In truth, they had not only obeyed 
the law perfunctorily, but had manifested a real eagerness 

* The quotation from Beranger may be rendered thus : Birth is not 
everything ; may God, my children, grant you an honourable death. 
f See the end of the volume. 



122 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



to facilitate the doings of the kidnappers. To use an ex- 
pression that fell from Mr Sumner, he erected for them 
an immortal Pillory where they will be spectacles to re- 
mote generations. This was an additional reason for in- 
cluding the orator in the prosecutions directed against 
the instigators and the authors of the attempt made for 
Burns's deliverance. His speech in Faneuil Hall was 
looked on as a provocation to a riot. This was a misre- 
presentation. Wendell Phillips, the eloquent aboli- 
tionist, who had also spoken at the meeting, was im- 
plicated in these prosecutions. Parker was delighted 
with this opportunity of measuring himself with the 
enemy face to face before the eyes of the whole of Ame- 
rica. He prepared his defence, and relied for his acquittal 
on a jury of honest New Englanders, But the magistrates 
charged with deciding on the propriety of the prosecution 
doubtless took the same view, for under pretext of legal 
informalities, they set the trial aside. Yes ; you may 
have on your side the government, the army, the navy, 
and still be a slave to fear. 

After the stealing of Anthony Burns, no more kid- 
napping was attempted in Boston. 



123 



CHAPTEE IX. 

THE LAST DAYS OF A JUST MAN. 

The Nebraska Bill — Mr Brooks's arguments — Parker's printed works — 
American revival — Resumption of theological hostilities — Conversion 
or death — Presentiment of early death — Alarming symptoms — At Santa 
Cruz — At Montreux — At Combe Varin — At Rome— A pontifical Mass 
— How Cardinal Antonelli might have given a president to the United 
States — John Brown — His execution — Parker's farewell to the earthly 
life — Prophetic delirium — Lilies and roses — An ascension — The Pro- 
testant Cemetery at Florence. 

The terrible crisis occasioned by the perpetual en- 
croachments of the pro-slavery policy advanced rapidly. 
In proportion as men of foresight tried to arouse public 
opinion to act against Southern tyranny, the latter 
hastened to strengthen its preponderance by securing 
new guarantees, and accomplishing new facts by which 
return to a better policy was made more costly, and, in 
many respects, more appalling. In 1853-54 the Missouri 
Compromise, by which slavery was precluded from passing 
the 36th degree of latitude, was set aside by the South ; 
which obtained from Congress the admission of Nebraska 
into the Union as a Slave State. In the same year the 
odious institution was imposed on Kansas, unwilling to 
receive it, by armed bands sent from the South. This 
new State was ravaged by civil war, and with the scarcely 
disguised connivance of the Federal power. Parker's 
friend, Sumner, was the first to denounce in Congress 
this new crime against humanity. The partisans of the 



124 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



South, though still a majority in the Chambers, began to 
feel ill at ease before that voice which no intimidation 
could silence, and before that conscience inaccessible to 
the seductions which had till then so often succeeded 
with Northern politicians. It followed that on the 21st 
of May, 1856, while between the sittings of Congress, 
Sumner, the representative of Boston, had remained at 
his desk to write some letters, a brutal representative of 
the South, and whose name ought to be preserved, a 
certain fellow, called Brooks, struck Mr Sumner a blow 
on the head which well-nigh killed him. The savage deed 
called forth in the South nothing but loud commenda- 
tions. The combined facts suffice to show to what an 
extent slavery extinguishes, in those who profit by it, 
every sentiment of probity and honour. Who could have 
supposed that the North would not have been unanimous 
to put an end to so deplorable a state of things ? In the 
elections for the Presidency, which took place in 1856, 
the abolitionist and republican candidate, Colonel Ere- 
mont, did, it is true, obtain a million and a quarter of 
votes. This was a striking sign of the change which was 
taking place in the mind of the public, but it was not 
enough for a victory over the pro-slavery candidate, Mr 
Buchanan. The North may now well applaud itself for 
its condescendance. That it is which gave Buchanan and 
his friends opportunity to prepare at their ease, during 
four years, for the attempted secession of the South ; 
which has had so disastrous an issue for its originators. 
The principal reason is that the tide of abolitionism went 
on rising steadily and continually. 

Erom 1854 to 1858 we see Theodore Parker at every 
instant on the breach, haranguing writing, lecturing, 
preaching, travelling, ceaselessly ; corresponding with 
Sumner, Banks, Seward, Chase, Emerson, Bancroft, the 
eminent historian, and a crowd of political and literary 



THE LAST DAYS OF A JUST MAX. 



125 



notabilities, accomplishing with his own head and hands 
the work of 10 men. It was "the great sin of slavery" 
that furnished its principal object to this nnrelaxing 
activity. Nevertheless, Parker did not on that account 
discontinue his attention to the local miseries of Boston, 
the needy, abandoned children, unprotected young women, 
&c. His sermons ever drew larger audiences, and were 
more readily read. To satisfy a continually increasing 
demand he himself published several collections, and his 
sermons, together with his speeches against slavery, form 
the greater part of the 12 volumes published in the 
United States under his name.* Besides the writings of 
which we have spoken, the collection contains a volume 
of Miscellanies, comprising several remarkable composi- 
tions in religious criticism, among others that on Bernard 
of Clairvaux, and that on German Theology, also a volume 
of 10 sermons on different subjects of religion and morality ; 
a third entitled " Sermons on Theism;" then two other 
volumes of "Additional Speeches;" which were after- 
wards followed by three fresh collections of speeches, 
addresses, &c.f 

This long series of writings presents a faithful image 
of that agitated life. The perusal of them is singularly 
attractive, not only on account of the number of subjects 
handled, but also because the most trodden paths of reli- 
gion and morality are made verdant by Parker's manly 
and intelligent eloquence. 

* The work for the English reader is the edition of Parker's " Col- 
lected Works," in 12 volumes, edited by Miss Cobbe, and published 
(1863 — 1865) by Triibner and Co., Paternoster Row, London. See the 
end of the volume. — T. 

f We know (says Dr Reville) Parker's Works only in the last edi- 
tion published in his lifetime, which is incomplete and defective in regard 
to typographical execution. We are glad to be able to recommend the 
excellent and complete edition which has just appeared in England, and 
which is due to the pious care of Miss Cobbe. 



126 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



Nevertheless, Parker did not in his intentions restrict 
himself to this incessant production, called forth by the 
wants of the hour. He prepared materials for two con- 
siderable works, one of which was to consist of a critical 
history of celebrated natives of America, the other— the 
most interesting to us, and requiring researches of all 
kinds — would have treated of the origin of forms of relir 
gion among the dominant races of humanity. The latter 
Parker was most anxious to complete and publish. He 
hoped to embody in it the definitive results of his studies 
and experience. He even announced that when 50 years 
of age he should discontinue his practice of weekly 
preaching in order to give himself wholly to this great 
undertaking. But already the voice of the Infinite 
Father was on the point of saying to him: "Enough, 
good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of thy Lord." 

He was, however, still to find himself the object of 
those religious animosities, which, during his last years 
on earth, disturbed him but comparatively little, whether 
from his own lassitude or their impotence. In 1859 
America was overrun with that kind of religious wild-fire, 
commonly called a " Revival," which, coming from the 
other side of the Atlantic, set Ireland, Scotland, and 
England in a blaze, and finally went out on the downs of 
Holland, in which naturally tranquil land it only flickered 
in two or three insulated points. In the often grotesque 
phenomena of this movement there were serious elements 
which might be discerned by a piercing and impartial 
eye. As long as in the Protestant masses of England 
and America there shall not reign a more intelligent idea 
of religion and of the salvation of souls, as long as an 
orthodoxy, at once formalist and dominated by the dualism 
of the middle ages, shall maintain the separation of the 
world from God, and consequently of ordinary life from 
religious life, they will understand piety in no other way 



THE LAST DAYS OF A JUST MAX. 



127 



than as a radical revolution, a sudden and complete 
rupture with the entire past. In ordinary times the 
multitude listens only to the voice of its lower interests, 
its pleasures, its physical wants, and remains indifferent 
to the aspirations of the soul. But in certain crises, and 
especially under the vague fear of great revolutions, or 
when heavy calamities press on society, moral shocks are 
felt which spread as if by contagion, and then you hear 
of nothing but what are called conversions; which rush 
from village to village and from land to land, some 
serious, some insane, and others — as the fashion may be. 
Commonly also these revivals are connected with twofold 
fervour in orthodox vigour. The crowd naturally con- 
found the gospel with the traditional form of Chris- 
tianity, with which alone they are acquainted. The 
doubts, the objections of vulgar unbelief, are covered and 
absorbed by the surging waves of religious excitement. 
Thereupon the awakened fancy it to be their duty not 
only to correct their faults (which would be very proper), 
but also to be domineering and insolent toward all who 
vary from the popular type of orthodoxy. One is tempted 
to suppose that this manifestation of ill-will is that which 
they find easiest, among the new duties which flow from 
their conversion. The American revival which broke out 
in the years 1857-53 had for its principal causes the 
gloomy perspectives in political matters, and especially 
the financial crisis which covered the country with private 
and public disasters. Nations are led to serious reflec- 
tions by the same causes as individuals. With both, these 
returns to a more glowing piety, however desirable in 
themselves, have their weak sides, and even their danger- 
ous ones. Too often men take shattered nerves for a 
vivified religious sentiment, and a narrow theology for an 
increase of fidelity to God. Hence it comes that charity, 
a spirit of equity, of fraternity, of good- will, that genuine 



128 



LIES OF THEODORE PARKER. 



fruit of the Holy Spirit, suffer in the degree in which the 
so-called conversions are multiplied. The revivalists of 
Boston, as might have been expected, failed not to re-open 
fire against the arch-enemy of their Puritan Theology. 
"Will it be believed? meetings were held at which the 
Omnipotent One was implored to send Parker Conversion 
or Death. 

It is no exaggeration. Here is an authentic specimen 
of prayers addressed to Heaven on one of these occasions : 

" O Lord, if this man is a subject of grace, convert him, and bring 
him into the kingdom of Thy dear Son ! But if he is beyond the 
reach of the saving influence of the gospel, remove him out of the 
way, and let his influence die with him." 

" 0 Lord, send confusion and distraction into his study this after- 
noon, and prevent his finishing his preparation for his labours to- 
morrow ; or if he shall attempt to desecrate Thy holy day by 
attempting to speak to the people, meet him there, Lord, and con- 
found him, so that he shall not be able to speak ! " 

" Lord, we know that we cannot argue him down, and the more 
we say against him, the more will the people flock after him, and the 
more will they love and revere him ! O Lord, what shall be done for 
Boston, if Thou dost not take this and some other matters in hand ? " 

" O Lord, if this man will still persist in speaking in public, in- 
duce the people to leave him, and to come up and fill this house in- 
stead of that.'* 

One pious brother invited his associates to beseech 
God to put a hook into the jaws of the man so that he 
might be forced to hold his tongue. Another, more 
poetical, begged the Lord to confound him, as of old he 
confounded Saul of Tarsus, and to make him a defender 
of that faith which he had so long tried to destroy. An- 
other advised his brethren to pray for Parker's conversion 
every day when the clocks struck one, wherever they 
might be, whether in the street or at their business. One 
of the features of this revival, alike in America and in 
England, ascribed special efficacy to the simultaneousness 
of numerous petitions put up for one and the same object. 
What artillerymen mean by concentric fire is well known j 



THE LAST DAYS OF A JUST MAN. 



129 



it is the most deadly manoeuvre of their special arm. 
This practice seems to have been transferred to that ap- 
plication of the soul to God which is called prayer. 

At the same time Parker received innumerable letters 
entreating him to be converted. His answer, bearing 
date April 9th, 1858, to one of these is addressed to a 
lady who had written to him with that view. 

" Dear Madam, — I am much obliged to you for the interest you 
take in my spiritual welfare, and obliged to you for the letter which 
has just come to hand. I gather from it that you wish me to believe 
the theological opinions which you entertain and refer to. I don't 
find that you desire anything more. 

I make no doubt the persons who pray for my conversion to 
the common ecclesiastical theology, and those who pray for my death, 
are equally sincere and honest. I don't envy them their idea of God 
when they ask Him to come into my study and confound me, or to 
put a hook into my jaws so that I cannot speak. Several persons 
have come to ' labour with me,' or have written me letters to convert 
me. They were commonly persons quite ignorant of the very things 
they tried to teach me ; they claimed a divine illumination which I 
saw no proofs of, in them, in their lives, or their doctrines. But I 
toon found it was with them as it is with you ; they did not seek to 
teach me either piety, which is the love of God, or morality, which is 
the keeping of the natural laws He has written in the constitution of 
man, but only to induce me to believe their catechism and join their 
church. I see no reason for doing either. 

14 1 try to use what talents and opportunities God has given me in 
the best way I can. I don't think it is my fault that I regret the 
absurd doctrines which I find in the creed of these people who wish 
to instruct me on matters of which they are profoundly ignorant. 

" But the Catholics treated the Protestants in the same way, and 
the Jews and the Heathens thus treated the Christians. I find good 
and religious men amongst all classes of men, Trinitarians, Unitari- 
ans, Salvationists, and Damnationists, Protestants, Catholics, Jews, 
Mohammedans, Heathen. There is one God for us all. and I have 
such perfect love of Him that it long since cast out all fear." 

Alas ! the good souls did not know that their prayers 
were superfluous. Already the first symptoms of the 
inexorable malady had appeared which were to reduce 
that courageous voice to silence. The hour came in which 
the love of God in Parker was to find itself in conflict 

9 



180 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



with tlie grief of knowing himself incapable of working 
any longer, for the sacred canse of God and his country. 
During many years he had been compelled to dispute 
with illness, constantly recurring, some time to employ 
with the diligence already described. His health, shaken 
as early as his college studies, had never become robust. 
Nothing but the internal fire which burned in him, could 
have supported the prodigious expenditure of the life he 
had led down till now. On the 11th of February, 1858, 
he wrote to one of his best friends, the Eev. S. J. May : 

" This has been a stupid winter to me. I have less than half my 
old joyous power of work, hence I have not written to you these three 
months ! I grind out one sermon a week ; that is about all I can do. 
I have lectured 73 times — always close at hand — and have done for 
the season. Last year I lectured 80 times — all the way from the 
Mississippi to the Penobscot, gave temperance and anti-slavery ad- 
dresses besides, and preached to two congregations, besides reading 
a deal of hard matter, and writing many things. I am 47 by the 
reckoning of my mother ; 74 in my own (internal) account. I am an 
old man. Sometimes I think of knocking at Earth's gate with my 
staff, saying, ' Liebe Mutter, Let me in ! ' I don't know what is to 
come of it. My father died at 77, a great hale man, sick 10 days, 
perhaps. My grandmother lived to be 93, and, 1 think, had ne'er a 
doctor after her eighth baby was born in her 36th year, or there- 
about. But nine of my ten brothers and sisters are already gone for- 
ward. None of them saw the 49th birthday. One lives yet, aged 
60. There is a deal of work to do. I enlisted ' for the whole war,' 
which is not half over yet." 

The terrible disease which brings to an early tomb so 
many of the Northern inhabitants, viz., pulmonary con- 
sumption, had seized the family of the vigorous agricul- 
turist of Lexington. It is possible that the germs had 
been deposited in the constitutions of his children by the 
miasmata which came from marshy plains near the spots 
where they spent their youth. Possibly by managing 
himself better Theodore might have prolonged his exist- 
ence beyond the fatal hour appointed for his brothers and 
sisters. But such a life as his had been could not but 



THE LAST DAYS OF A JUST MAN. 



131 



favour the development of the formidable disease. One 
winter night wholly passed in an open conveyance, in the. 
midst of inundated meadows in Albany, gave him his 
death-blow. From that time he was incessantly tormented 
by an obstinate cough. He attempted to continue his 
preaching duties. 

The 9th of January, 1859, as he was about to com- 
mence the service, he was seized with a pulmonary hemor- 
rhage of the worst augury, and was compelled to write to 
his people already assembled that it was impossible for 
him to preach that day. 

" Sunday Morning, Jan. 9. 1859. 

" Well -beloved astd loxg-teied Feiexds,— I shall not speak 
to you to-day ; for this morning, a little after four o'clock, I had a 
slight attack of bleeding in the lungs or throat. I intended to preach, 
on ; The Religion of Jesus and the Christianity of the Church; or the 
Superiority of Good-will to Man over Theological Fancies.' " 

" I hope you will not forget the contribution for the poor, whom 
we have with us always. I don't know when I shall again look upon 
your welcome faces, which have so often cheered my spirit when my 
flesh was weak. 

'1 May we do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God, 
and his blessing will be upon us here and hereafter ; for his infinite 
love is with us for ever and ever ! 

" Faithfully your friend, 

Theodoee Pabkee." 

But on Sunday the society determined that his sti- 
pend should be continued on its ordinary footing until 
he had fully recovered his health, and his physicians 
recommended a year's holiday, advising him to pass 
the time at Santa Cruz, one of the Danish Antilles. 
The first effects of this leisure, spent under the shies 
and near the sea of the tropics, appeared very auspicious. 
His strength returned as if by enchantment. Then it 
was that he wrote his most interesting, impressive, and 
valuable autobiography (Experience as a Minister) in re- 
ply to a most affectionate letter he had received from his 

9 * 



132 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



congregation. He gave himself up to an old passion, 
botany, and to a more recent one, the noble thought 
which had filled his latter years, namely, emancipation of 
the slaves. He found at Santa Cruz a black population 
which had been free 11 years, and whose progress de- 
lighted him, although the whites had done little to ac- 
celerate it. But the intense heat of summer came. It 
was thought that a voyage into Europe would do him 
good. On the contrary, the visit to the old world seems 
to have ill agreed with him. On the 1st of June, 1859, 
he was in London, where he had the joy of seeing Mr 
and Mrs Craft, who were happy as well as grateful for 
what he had done for them. Then he travelled through 
England, Erance, and Switzerland, with the alternately 
favourable and alarming changes of health characteristic 
of the malady which was to end his days. The letters 
which he wrote during these latter months of his earthly 
life show us him as always engaged in great interests, 
drawing from the condition of Europe, such as it appeared 
to his eyes, prognostics favourable to liberty of every kind, 
without concealing from himself the severe trials through 
which we must pass before we reach the promised land. It 
was the time of the Italian war. The terrible Erench 
regiments had passed the Alps, and their irresistible on- 
slaught had broken through the iron wall of the Austrian 
army. Parker took a lively interest in those events, 
although he somewhat doubted the aptitude of Italy to 
profit much by the chance of revival which was offered 
her. Erequently does he also speak to his friends of him- 
self and of the state of his health. It is evident that he 
wishes to spare them disquietude; sometimes he even 
seems to recover a hope of so prolonging existence as, if 
not to live as he had lived, yet to finish the works which 
he had commenced. He had for some time seen with 
satisfaction tokens of progress in American Protestantism. 



THE LAST DAYS OF A JUST MAN. 



133 



It was, however, painful to hira to receive a salary for 
duties which he was unable to discharge. On the 12th of 
September he sent in his resignation. It was not ac- 
cepted. The refusal was couched in the kindest terms. 
After having sojourned some time at Montreux, on the 
borders of the Lake of Geneva, which at that spot spreads 
out all the magnificence of its shores and its waters, he 
went to pass the ardours of the year in the Jura moun- 
tains in the cottage of Combe Yarin, which belonged to 
his learned friend, Mr Desor. 

"We are indebted to the professor of Neuchatel for a 
pleasing account of the manner in which the invalid 
passed his time in that picturesque retreat, where men, 
differing alike in country and opinions, but for the most 
part eminent in science and literature, assembled one 
with another, and, by conversation of the highest interest, 
charmed the leisure hours imposed on them by care need- 
ful for their health. Parker formed an intimacy with the 
excellent Hans Kuchler, minister of the German Catholic 
Church of Heidelberg, one of the most respectable of the 
men that took part in the not altogether satisfactory 
movement occasioned twenty years ago by the ex-priest 
Eonge. The sudden death of Kuchler, at Nidau, at the 
moment when he was about to rejoin his family, threw a 
deep shadow over the circle of Combe Varin. # From the 
conversations held in that Swiss Cottage came forth an 
Album under the care of Professor Desor, in which, by 
the side of excellent scientific articles, stands a freak from 

* Mr Hanz Lovenz Kuchler was a barrister at Heidelberg, dis- 
tinguished by the courage which he employed in the service of the vic- 
tims of the Baden insurrection of 1848, who fell under the exceptional 
jurisdiction of the Prussian Councils of War. In spite of the most dis- 
couraging circumstances Kuchler succeeded in saving from death a num- 
ber of the accused, and was the support and the consolation of others 
whom he was unable to rescue. 



134 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



Parker's pen. A Bumblebee's Thought on the Blan and Pur- 
pose of the Universe* It is a biting satire on the language, 
the reasonings, the pedantic habits of learned societies, 
and in particular of certain theories founded entirely on 
man's pretension to be the final end of creation. Per- 
haps some writers in Europe and America, too much dis- 
posed to interpret the laws of nature in a way exclusively 
favourable to human pride, would gain by seriously 
meditating on this playful criticism. The same album 
contained a medallion giving in profile a portrait of Par- 
ker. His large open forehead, his beard, which he wore 
unshorn, white before its time, features deeply cut and 
expressive, denoting a singular mixture of benevolence 
and irony — his whole physiognomy corresponds to what 
we know of him from his history. During a last return 
of his physical energy, he hewed down with the axe some 
firs destined for the saw-mill. He thus went back to 
one of the occupations of his youth. The finest tree of 
all, which he cut down with a skill that astonished the 
spectators, was sound only in appearance ; its heart was 
diseased. This was a sad presage. 

Parker was advised to go and pass the winter in 
Madeira or in Egypt. A sort of impulse, which he could 
not explain to himself, took him to Rome, whose libraries 
he wished to consult in view of the works he was pre- 
paring for, and whence he hoped to proceed, in company 
with his friend Desor, to visit the volcanic regions of the 
South of the Italian peninsula. 

Accordingly you may in fancy see him again traversing 
that Italy which he had visited 15 years before, under 
very different auspices. As it often happens in such 
diseases as his, comparative improvement followed each 
change of climate, and he passed the autumn of 1859 in 



* Vol. xii. Miss Cobbe's edition. 



THE LAST DAYS OF A JUST MAN. 135 

great intellectual activity, too much stimulated by the 
news which reached him from America, and by the study 
of the antiquities in which Eome is so rich for one who is 
familiar with history and theology. In a letter written 
from Eome to his friend, Mr Bipley, he drew out a plan 
of study for the six months he intended to pass in that 
city : " I intend," he said, " to study, 1st, the geology of 
Rome ; 2nd, its flora and its fauna ; 3rd, its archaeology ; 
and 4th, its architecture. I have already made a begin- 
ning, though here only a few days. This labour will take 
me out every fine day, and will divert my mind from my- 
self, one of the most disagreeable objects of contempla- 
tion." 

On the 5th of November he wrote to another of his 
friends, Mr Manley, a letter, the greater part of which 
we transcribe. It is interesting to see what impression 
was made on such a spirit as his by those pontifical 
ceremonies to which certain persons persist in ascribing a 
great virtue for the conversion of souls. 

" Eome, St Guy Fawkes' Day (5th Nov.), 1859. 
" My DEAR Johx MANLEY, — Yesterday I went into the church 
of St Carlo (Carlo Borromaco, you know), and saw the Pope, a kind- 
looking, fat-headed old man. There were some 60 Cardinals (in full 
toggery), and lots of Bishops, Archbishops, and Senators in the 
church. Eight men toted the old Pope round in the great chair, 
while he held up his right hand to bless the people. Mass was said 
by some high functionary, and the Pope sat in a great chair, where 
many of the dignitaries came up to kiss his hand — he holding it un- 
der his robe — so it was only the old clothes they kissed. I think that 
would not quite content a youthful lover. The Pope rode in a splendid 
state coach, drawn by six horses (I had the honour of talking with 
his coachman), followed by one or two other empty state coaches, to 
give additional dignity to his Holiness. Cardinals and others had 
elegant carriages, several to one person sometimes — with three foot- 
men to each. Antonelli's coach is a quite plain one. But the sig- 
nificant part of the thing is this : there were 200 French soldiers in 
the street, and a battalion of Italian horse; and besides, in the 
church the Pope's Swiss Guard and about 200 Italian soldiers — all 
fully armed, with bayonets fixed. This was to make it safe for ' the 



138 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



Father of the People ' to come and bless ' his children ! ' That is a 
comment on the Eoman Question ! I walked about in the street, 
after I had seen enough of the tomfoolery in the church, looked at 
the carriages, talked with the soldiers, &c. ; and then went to other 
business. Afterwards I saw the whole boodle of them go off. It 
really was a grand show. The Roman religion is nothing but a 
show ; the Pope is a puppet, his life a ceremony ; only his taking 
snuff is real, and he does that ' after the worst kind,' as the Yankees 
say ; I mean, to the fullest extent. Get converted to Romanism at 
Rome ! One must be a fool to think of it. I should, as soon go over 
to the worship of ' Osiris, Orus, Apis, Isis,' after looking at the mum- 
mies of Thebes, as accept Romanism after seeing Rome." 

Let us also quote a description of Eoman politics, in 
1859. Parker had the information from a reliable source, 
and communicated it to the same Mr Mauley on the 6th 
of January, 1880. 

" Chief City of Ecclesiastical Humbug, Jan. 6, 1860. 
" I think I have no Roman news to write. Of course, you know 
all the public acts of the Pope and his gang, from the extracts of 
European newspapers at home ; but here is one little item which 
shows how things are managed here. You remember the ferocious 
attack made on Mr Perkins and his family last summer, at Perugia. 
Mr Stockton, the American minister, visited Cardinal Antonelli, the 
Pope behind the Pope, and demanded satisfaction and money. A. 
put him off with evasions and foolish arguments, and so the interview 
ended in nothing. But the next day a priest visited Mr S., and talked 
over the matter freely ; he was a great friend to America, thought 
the conduct of the soldiers at P. was atrocious, &c. S. was a little 
cautious, but told his opinions freely. Then the priest asked, 1 If A. 
does not comply with your request, what shall you do?' and S. re- 
plied, ' There is only one thing for me, i. e. to demand my passports 
immediately and go home ; there the affair will make so much noise 
that I shall probably be the next President ! ' The priest went off, 
and the next day came a letter from A., telling S. that his terms 
should be forthwith acceded to ! So much for spunk and a sharp 
look-out. Of course the priest was a spy of the Cardinal, sent to find 
out how the matter lay on the minister's mind." 

This is one of the last letters in which Parker shows 
ease and gaiety. In truth, his stay in Eome was in no 
way propitious to him. The winter had been early, wet, 
and cold. The symptoms of his disorder had grown 



THE LAST DAYS OF A JUST MAX. 



137 



worse. Besides, the news he received from home greatly 
agitated him. During the autumn of 1859, John Brown 
made the attack on Harper's Ferry, which cost him his 
life, without doing much to break the bonds of the slave, 
which he hoped to sunder at a single blow. 

Captain Brown, a native of !S"orth Elba (Xew York), 
had in Kansas distinguished himself in defence of the 
rights of the new State against the barefaced invasions of 
pro-slavery partisans. Foreseeing the frightful future 
which the upholding of slavery reserved for his country, 
he conceived a plan, more original than sensible, to hasten 
on its abolition. His notion was to establish himself in a 
strong position on the frontier of the Slave States, and in- 
viting the blacks to join him there, to force the planters 
to emancipate their people, from fear of a revolt. He 
had kept his secret, and the abolitionist committees, 
especially that which was presided over by Parker, had 
confided to him considerable sums, to be employed gener- 
ally in promoting emancipation, without knowing exactly 
how he would use the money. Great confidence was, 
however, felt in his ability. He had been seen to lead a 
whole troop of negroes out of the bosom of servitude, 
avoiding the police and their dogs, and defeating all the 
efforts made by mayors and governors to put a stop to 
the exodus. On Sunday, the 16th of October, he, at the 
head of a small band, surprised and took the arsenal of 
Harper's Ferry. He was soon compelled to surrender to 
superior forces, after a combat which he wished to avoid, 
and which seems to have been the result of a misunder- 
standing. Indeed it has never been possible to learn 
exactly what he intended to do after the capture of the 
arsenal, or in what his expectation was disappointed. It 
is probable that he expected to receive support from the 
interior, and that the affair having failed, he preferred 
being silent to compromising his associates. However it 



138 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



may have been, his fate was not doubtful, and he yielded 
to no illusion on the subject. He went forwards to death, 
calm and resolute, refusing aid from pro-slavery clergy- 
men, and in full Christian hope, being deeply assured of 
the holiness of his cause. As he drew near toward the 
place of execution, he perceived an infant negro whom its 
mother carried in her arms and fondled tenderly ; then 
he began to speak of the beauty of the country. " You 
are more cheerful than I, captain," said the officer, who 
had superintended the melancholy affair, and who walked 
by his side. " Yes," Brown replied, " I may well be so." 

Oh ! if then the South could have been told that the 
days drew near when volunteers flocking from the North 
to repel their aggression against the capital of the Union, 
would bring on their superb territory the plague of "War 
while singing 

u The soul of old John Brown leads our way ! " 

The simple truth is that Brown, in the work of Ameri- 
can emancipation, was one of those nobly insensate fore- 
runners who attempt the impossible, such as Pisacane was 
in Sicily, and rush on to certain death, as if they were 
moved by an assurance of the necessity of martyrs to the 
success of every righteous cause. 

Information of his undertaking, of his failure, and of 
his condemnation, with the addition that his execution 
was fixed for the 2nd of the ensuing December, reached 
Theodore Parker in the last days of November. He 
gathered up his remaining forces to fulminate a long 
accusation against slavery, in the form of a letter which 
he addressed to Mr Prancis Jackson, and which was laid 
before the public. He loved John Brown on account of 
his character, his bravery, his self-devotement. He had 
foretold that he would die like a martyr and a saint, nor 



THE LAST DAYS OP A JUST MAX. 



139 



less that his death would reverberate powerfully and long 
in the heart of the American people. 

M I suppose you would like to know something about 
myself," he added at the close. ' : Borne has treated me 
to bad weather, which tells its story on my health and 
certainly does not mend me. # * * The sad tidings from 
America — my friends in peril, in exile, in jail, killed, or 
to be hung, have filled me with grief, and so I fall back 
a little, but hope to get forwards again. God bless you 
and yours, and comfort you ! " 

On the 2nd of December of the same year, he wrote 
in his journal what follows : 

" 1 Santa Bibiana's Day.' Day appointed to hang Capt. Brown. — 
It is now 6 P.M., and I suppose it is all over with my friends at 
Charlestown, Ya., and that six corpses lie there, ghastly, stiff, dead. 
How the heart of the slave-holders rejoices ! But there is a day after 
to-day, John Brown did not fear the gallows ; he had contemplated 
it, no doubt, as a possible finger-post to indicate the way to heaven. 
It is as good as a cross. It is a pity they could not have had two 
thieves to hang with Brown. There have been anti-slavery meetings 
to-day, at Boston, "Worcester, Salem, New Bedford, Providence, &c. 
The telegraph has spread the news of Brown's death, I suppose, over 
half the Union by this time. It is a great dark day in America. 
Thunder and lightnings will come out of it." 

Some days after he wrote to Professor Desor, while 
relating to him the mournful tale of Harper's Ferry. 

" We are coming upon a great crisis in American history, and a 
civil war seems at no great distance. The slave-holders will be 
driven, by the logic of their principles, to demand what the free men 
of the Xorth will not consent to : then comes the split — not without 
blood ! All national constitutions are writ on the parchment of a 
drum-head, and published with the roar of cannon ! " 

With what grief must his ardent soul have been de- 
voured at the thought of being kept from his post at such 
a moment ! His abode at Rome, where he had all the 
trouble in the world to learn what was going on in the 



140 



LIFE OP THEODORE PARKER. 



scientific and political world, became to him more and 
more insupportable. In January, 1860, he felt himself 
more ill than ever, and began to feel that his end was ap- 
proaching. The very day of the Carnival he wrote to Mr 
Bipley : 

" 0 George, the life I am here slowly dragging to an end — tor- 
tuous, but painless — is very, very imperfect, and fails of much I 
meant to hit and might have reached, nay, should, had there been 
10 or 20 years more left for me ! But, on the whole, it has not been 
a mean life, measured by the common run of men ; never a selfish 
one. Above all things else, I have sought to teach the true idea of 
man, of God, of religion, with its truths, its duties, and its joys. I 
never fought for myself, nor against a private foe ; but have gone 
into the battle of the 19th century, and followed the flag of humanity. 
Now I am ready to die, though conscious that I leave half my work 
undone, and much grain lies in my fields, waiting only for him that 
gathereth sheaves. I would rather lay my bones with my fathers 
and mothers at Lexington, and think I may : but will not complain 
if earth or sea shall cover them up elsewhere. It is idle to run from 
death!" 

However, he was desirous not to die in Borne ; — " this 
land, crushed," he said, " under two curses." Mr Desor, 
having joined his friend, found him aged by 10 years. 
His wife, who lavished on him the tenderest cares, his 
friends, Doctor Appleton, Mr Joseph Lyman, Miss Steven- 
son, who had followed his steps or joined him in Europe, 
had now to give up all hope. He himself felt a feverish 
need of quitting the papal territory — he wished to die on 
a free soil. In five days he travelled in a carriage from 
Eome to Florence. Mr Desor relates that being, as he 
had expressly directed, aroused at the instant he was 
passing the boundary, he fixed his moist eyes on the first 
tricoloured post he met with on his road. This last 
salutation, made by the dying Parker to the Italian 
colours, recalls the benediction which Baron Bunsen ad- 
dressed from his death-bed " to Italy and her liberty." 
To have received at her baptism the best wishes of two 



THE LAST DAYS OF A JUST MAX. 

such men as Parker and the venerable author of The Sig. 
of the Times, is a happy augury for a nation who after so 
many trials is rising into a new life. 

At Florence, one of his fervent admirers whom we 
have already mentioned, Miss Cobbe, had the painful 
pleasure to see him for the first time. Sharing with Mrs 
Parker and Miss Stevenson the attentions required by 
the dying man, she has traced with the charm of a well- 
executed pen, directed by a loving heart, the novissima 
verba (last words) of her illustrious friend.* 

" You are not to think or say you have seen me — this 
is only the memory of me. Those who love me most can 
only wish me a speedy passage to the other world, of 
course. I am not afraid to die," — he said this, adds Miss 
Cobbe, with what I could have supposed his old fire, — 
"but there was so much to do!" I replied, " You have 
given your life to God, to his truth and his work, as truly 
as any old martyr of them all." "I do not know," he 
rejoined : " I had great powers committed to me ; I have 
but half used them." The next day his knowledge of 
what was going ou around him began to get confused and 
dim. Miss Cobbe gave him a nosegay of lilies, the 
flowers he liked best. He asked what day it was. She 
said, u It is Sunday — a blessed day." " Yes, a most blessed 
day," said he suddenly, seriously, "when one has got over 
the superstition of it." He fell back in a vague reverie. 
Miss Cobbe respectfully kissed his hand and retired. 

A few days after he suddenly raised himself, and see- 
ing Miss Cobbe at his pillow, took her hand and whispered 
into her ears ; " I have something to say to you ; there 
are now two Theodore Parkers ; one dies here in Italy, 
the other I have planted in America. The latter will live 
and finish my work. God bless you ! " he added, giving 



* Vol. i. of her edition of Parker's " Collected VTorks." T. 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



a handsome bronze inkstand which he had put aside 
for her. Then the torpor, which had become his habitual 
state, took the upper hand and continued till his death, in- 
terrupted solely by some words denoting that he thought 
himself travelling on his way back. " Oh when we are 
at home, settled in the country, how quiet and happy we 
shall be ! " One night he said to his wife who was watch- 
ing near his bed : " Lay your head on the pillow, my 
dear, and sleep ; it is so long since you had any sleep." 
Some days after, the 10th of May, 1860, he passed away 
without a struggle, calm as a child that falls asleep. His 
head, venerable before its time, framed in his white beard, 
reposed under a garland of Florence roses, which had shed 
perfume on his last sigh. 

On Sunday, the 13th, at four o'clock in the afternoon, 
that is, at the moment when he began his service in Bos- 
ton, an old friend, the Eev. Mr Cunningham, accompanied 
his mortal remains to their last resting-place. It was a 
festival day in Florence ; banners floated from all the 
windows. At first his friends felt hurt; but a sudden 
impulse effaced the idea of any incongruity, and they 
whispered to each other : " It is a festival, the feast of 
ascension," and they called to mind the closing words of 
his last sermon, "Friend, come up higher." 

There is at Florence, near the Pinti Grate, a small 
Protestant cemetery of great simplicity, admirably situated 
and well shaded with trees. That is the spot where 
Theodore Parker was interred. At his own request the 
minister read over his coffin the Beatitudes which open 
the sermon on the mount. In that humble gathering- 
place of the dead, near the centre, the traveller, desirous 
of saluting the ashes of one of the noblest beings of the 
19th century, may discover without much trouble a simple 
marble slab bearing this inscription : 



THE LAST DAYS OF A JUST MAX. 



143 



THEODOEE PABXEE, 

BORN AT LEXINGTON, MASS., 
UNITED STATES 0 E AMERICA, 

Aug. 24, 1810, 
Died at Florence, May 10, 1860. 

An American pine, similar to those under whose shade 
he was so fond of praying in his early days, overhangs 
the modest monument. It is a symbol of his far-off 
native land, his dear home where his ancestors sleep. 
But ever, when any of his numerous Boston auditors, 
whom he encouraged or consoled with his manly and 
religious voice, pass through Florence, the tomb of this 
man of God is visited out of gratitude. He rests under 
the flowers he loved so much, and often are they renewed. 



144 



CHAPTEE X. 

THIS HAN WAS A PEOPHET. 

A comment on his work— Questions serving as a touchstone — Slavery and 
bibliolatry — The religion of the future — Criticisms — Sympathies — 
Channing and Schleiermacher — What a prophet is — How religious 
truth advances — A rock taken tor a vessel. 

Arrived at this tlie end of all biographies, we must 
ask ourselves what remains of that brilliant existence 
which we have sketched, and to what extent Parker's 
vision was prophetic when on his death-bed he saw him- 
self doubled and continuing his work in America, while 
his body dissolved in an Italian soil. 

Parker founded neither a church nor a school. His 
ministry, his words, his writings, his entire life, was a 
demonstration of spirit and power, rather than the con- 
struction of anything visible and organized ; consequently 
it is difficult to indicate the positive results of his efforts, 
although the latest energy of the principles which he 
proclaimed, and the impressions which he left behind, are 
incontestable. Let it also be observed that our age does 
not bend itself readily to those individual actions that 
may be exactly distinguished from all that is not they, 
and that may be traced in the different domains of human 
activity. All, whatever the ground on which we try to 
build, whether science, art, politics, religion ; let our rank 
be elevated or obscure in the hierarchy of mind ; — all of us 
have co-workers, and no sovereign, consequently it ever 



THIS MAX WAS A PROPHET. 



145 



becomes less easy to detect, in the web of social destinies, 
the personal threads, the interlacement of which forms 
its substance. Finally, the terrible commotions which, 
during the last five years, have shaken the United States 
to their centre, must come to a full end before the Ame- 
rican people can again enter into the condition of a normal 
development. It is no less true that these periods of 
concussion and delay are seasons of prolific incubation 
which afterwards accelerate the growth of seeds previously 
sown. 

In another view what a fine comment have those five 
years furnished on the social and religious teachings of 
the Boston preacher. Hardly had his ashes grown cold, 
when the Union arrived on the border of that Bed Sea 
which he had so often foretold. It arrived there without 
suspecting the depth of the water, and imbued with illu- 
sions and prejudices, which could not but make the pass- 
age more difficult and painful than the most clear-sighted 
could have foreseen. Let it be observed that to a certain 
point, the two portions of the United States who were to 
engage in that gigantic struggle, correctly estimated their 
respective situation. The Xorth had reason to think that 
it had at its disposal vastly greater resources than the 
South. On the other hand, the South was not wrong 
when it founded its hopes of success on a more skilful 
and overwhelming employment of the forces which it had 
at command. Everything would depend on the spirit 
that predominated in the North. It is in vain to have im- 
mense resources, you grow weary of throwing them away ; 
and if patriotism, if the moral element, had been lacking 
in the Xorth, certainly the able heads that directed the 
secession would have succeeded in their sinister enter- 
prise. Then we should have had in the 19th century a 
great republic based on slavery. The triumph of the 
Xorth has consequently proved in the end a fact in the 

10 



146 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



moral order of the universe, due to moral causes, the 
might of which the assailants could not calculate. If 
now we go back to days preceding this fearful duel, we 
may say without the least exaggeration that Parker 
shines in the first rank of those who cried to the North 
most energetically, Be on your guard; and who con- 
tributed most largely to arouse the mind of the people 
out of that torpor into which it had been thrown by 
material prosperity. The city of Boston has always been 
the first in determination and sacrifices to defend the 
Federal cause, and with it, the cause of humanity. The 
Massachusetts volunteers were the first in the hour of 
greatest peril to make their bodies a rampart around the 
Federal capital, seriously menaced by the insurgent army. 
The silver and gold of New England never ceased to flow 
forth even in the darkest hours, to sustain the good cause. 
If Lincoln, whose republican greatness was not sufficiently 
appreciated in his life-time, if that admirable man never 
lost courage, it is because he felt himself supported by 
the best men of the Union, by honourable people, resolved 
as much as he, not to give way an inch, and ready for 
everything except to yield. At length the day came when 
the president of the United States saw himself able to 
proclaim the abolition of slavery, which he did amid the 
plaudits of that same crowd that selfish sophists had so 
long tried to blind touching interests the most manifest. 
Parker's ashes may well have thrilled with joy when 
touched by the news reverberating from the other side of 
the Atlantic. "We have no wish to glorify our hero by 
letting persons little instructed in American affairs, take 
the impression that the Boston pastor was the principal 
author of that patriotic revolution. But we must not 
underrate the glorious part which belongs to him, and if 
only you know the man you will comprehend the in- 
fluence which he exercised on those eminent citizens of 



THIS MAN WAS A PROPHET. 



1-17 



the Union, "Wendell Philipps, Chase, Seward, Sumner, 
Hale, Banks, Horace Mann, and others, his friends, his 
admirers, his fellow- combatants, with whom he ceaselessly 
conversed and corresponded, encouraging them, consoling 
them, commending them, sometimes frankly blaming 
them, always feeling a warm interest in their noble 
endeavours, always ready to enhance his public instruc- 
tions by his generous and faithful example. Who, more- 
over, can measure the amount of liberal feeling which his 
numerous lectures poured into the different States of the 
Union ? How often ears of corn, ripened before others 
under the rays of that frank and enlightened liberalism, 
foretold the hour of the coming harvest ! All that cannot 
be calculated, but it has weight, immense weight, in the 
scales of the history of God's kingdom on earth. 

Slavery was the special question that offered itself to 
the American reformer ; a question of immediate and 
urgent importance. Each age has its general principles 
which are admitted in virtue of their being self-evident, 
so long as you are disinterested as to their practical con- 
sequences. The touchstone in regard to convictions is the 
conflict which those principles are sure to produce with 
institutions or traditions, to which men are attached more 
than they like to own even to themselves. Then is it 
that sophistry comes to the aid of alarmed interests and 
prejudices. Then too is it that you may discern what 
men's minds really are, and learn on what side they are 
inclined to by their secret leanings. That which the 
question of slavery was to the republicans of the United 
States, the same is the question of the temporal power of 
the popes to European liberalism. On this delicate point 
we see liberal convictions, thought to be most solid, hesi- 
tate, seek loop-holes, and even belie themselves in the 
most lamentable fashion, in the same way in the United 
States. You see republicans make a display of their 

10 * 



1-18 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



democratic sentiments, all the while that they pleaded 
for the retention of slavery. This incredible contradiction 
has been well laughed at on this side of the Atlantic, but 
the liberal European who, while an advocate of national 
sovereignty, of the right of every people to choose its own 
government, of the independence of civil society, does not 
fear to sacrifice a nation to the fancied good of a Church, 
holds a position not less ludicrous than the pro-slavery 
democrat of the American Union. Though on all other 
questions the former be as liberal and the latter as demo- 
cratic as you like, not the less does it ensue from the 
trial which lays their heart bare, that the one is more of 
a Romanist than a liberal, and the other more of an 
aristocrat than a republican. Among the elements which 
best aid man to feed himself on illusions as to the real 
tendency of his opinions, the first rank is held by those 
which he thinks he derives from the order of religious 
ideas. There is a " well done " of a particular kind which 
you pronounce on behalf of yourself when you can declare 
that you make to religion sacrifices which you would not 
have made to things of a secular nature, or that religion 
sanctions that which would be blameworthy if viewed 
simply as a matter of justice. Here is the reason why 
the influence of religious and truly liberal men is always 
very great when they clear the way of progress from 
obstacles placed there by religion misunderstood. It is 
certain that on the question of slavery the Americans are 
the victims of their religious narrowness. A Protestant 
people, of the Puritan type, much divided into sects, but 
united in veneration, often superstitious, for the sacred 
books, the citizens of the United States could long close 
their ears to the crying contradiction there was between 
their political principles and the institution of slavery, 
while saying that neither the Old Testament nor the New 
opposed slavery, and that both even admitted it as a 



THIS MAX WAS A PROPHET. 



149 



normal element of human society. Doubtless it is easy 
to reply that the Old Testament is only the preparation 
of a better order of things, and that the New has deposited 
in our race its divine principles in leaving men to draw 
hence successively individual or social consequences ; 
that to place slavery side by side with the brotherhood of 
men, children of the same Father, heirs of the same 
salvation, is as absurd as to give a court, a diplomacy, 
and an army to the successor of One whose " kingdom is 
not of this world." But, let it be carefully observed, this 
reply is valid only if you consent to acknowledge that 
there are imperfections in the sacred books. Evidently it 
is an imperfection of the New Testament that its authors 
did not see the bearing of the principles of Christianity 
in regard to an institution so important and so general in 
their day, as slavery. How can one imagine that a book 
dictated by God to teach man in all ages all verities and 
duties, should have been silent on a point of such gravity ? 
Thus it was that the superstitious worship of the Bible 
contributed in the United States to maintain that accursed 
institution. Theodore Parker undermined slavery by his 
bold criticism of the Bible, more perhaps than by the dis- 
courses directly prompted by the horror the observance 
called forth in his mind. And as a theology, more liberal 
than that which prevailed around him, was in his hands a 
marvellous instrument of political liberalism, so the future 
will show us America profiting by its political liberalism 
to realize sooner and better than any other nation, the re- 
ligious liberalism after which the soul of our age is sigh- 
ing. For all liberalisms, like all liberties, are linked to- 
gether. 

It is chiefly as a religious thinker and writer that 
Theodore Parker belongs to the future. The moment is 
near when the question of slavery will have passed away. 
For us in Europe it exists no longer except by rebound, 



150 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



and in virtue of the mutual relationship which unites us 
to other parts of the world. Eut what ought we in 
general to think of Parker's religious work ? This ques- 
tion interests the old world not less than the new. 

We may describe Parker's religion as Christian Theism, 
and the characteristic of that mode of religion is this, that 
to one or two very simple, and, if I may so speak, very 
sober doctrines, it adds a great richness of applications to 
individual and social life. For ourselves, there is not the 
slightest doubt that all the currents of our modern life 
lead us to that side of religion, and we are not shaken in 
that conviction by the cries of terror, uttered by those 
who desire at any cost that we should remain immured in 
a past, where we should be stifled ; any more than by the 
frivolous predictions which fall from those who, disown- 
ing one of the most ineradicable instincts of human na- 
ture, go about declaring that we are hastening on to the 
end of all religion. The human mind is one ; it feels itself 
made to be free ; it feels itself impelled to worship. In 
this twofold tendency of our being there is an irrefragable 
proof that we are not truly ourselves, truly faithful to 
our nature, except in worshipping freely, and in living 
religiously in our freedom. Man cannot for long remain 
faithless to his nature, and this is the reason why out of 
the antithesis actually formed by irreligion and supersti- 
tion, both of them materialistic, — even if, or perhaps be- 
cause, the great majority is at this hour divided between 
those two evil tendencies, — there will arise in the near 
future a prolific synthesis of religion and liberty, under 
the aegis of spiritualism. Under what form and to what 
point has Theodore Parker contributed to prepare this 
magnificent future ? 

I will not discuss a question which perhaps more than 
one of my readers has put to himself. "Was Parker jus- 
tified in quitting the constituted body of Unitarian 



THIS MAN WAS A PROPHET. 



151 



churches, to become the minister of a community alto- 
gether after his own heart ? To reply as it ought to be 
done to this question, we need more information than we 
possess touching the chances he still had (and which, any 
way, his rupture diminished considerably) of infusing 
more religious knowledge and more liberalism into the 
church of his infancy and youth. Especially would it be 
necessary that that should not have taken place in Ame- 
rica. "Whatever may be said, the United States have a 
national religion ; and it is Protestantism. Tou cannot 
fancy the great American republic religiously bound to 
submit to a priest, dwelling on the other side of the 
ocean. America for the Americans — this, called the Mon- 
roe doctrine, is, in the mind of a true Yankee, still more 
evidently just and true, if possible, in religion than in 
politics. But not only there is no state church, there is 
not even what is called in Europe, in Erance, for instance, 
in Holland, in Switzerland, a national church, that is, a 
church considering itself the natural church of the Pro- 
testants of the country, which has not ceased, while 
undergoing much modification, to perpetuate itself, over 
all the surface of the land, down from the earliest days of 
the Reformation, and which, sharing in the dark and in 
the fine days of the national past, having its roots in the 
most glorious or the most afflicting national traditions, 
has become a kind of religious home, which is loved like 
the home of our natural birth, and which no one would 
abandon except in the last extremity. It may be added 
that, as a general rule, it is in the bosom of these national 
churches that religious liberalism finds in Europe its 
most favourable soil and its best guarantees against dog- 
matic narrowness. There is here a whole class of senti- 
meuts and ideas which is only half understood in England, 
and which is totally unknown in America. As much as 
schism is repugnant to the great majority of continental 



152 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



Protestants, so much does it seem in America a perfectly 
simple matter as soon as ever it is recommended by any 
kind of dissent ; and what shows the difference of different 
countries in this regard is this, that in the numerous 
controversies Parker had to carry on no endeavour was 
made to blame or praise him on the point. Tou see 
that, in the opinion of his friends as well as of his foes, 
there was nothing unusual, nothing to except to, nothing 
to boast of, in the position he took in Boston, by putting 
himself at the head of an entirely new community. 
"Without prosecuting this special question further we will 
inquire what opinion we ought to hold of his religious 
teachings taken in themselves. 

Prom time to time I have made certain reserves. 
These I must complete. Thus I avow that I occasionally 
regret to find Parker so bitter and so violent in his con- 
troversies. His chief quality is energy ; by no means is 
his taste always good ; and often the blows he deals are 
heavy rather than just. The old dogmas, erroneous as 
they are, deserve the respect which should never be re- 
fused to good intentions. Men have not so long believed 
in everlasting fire for the pleasure of thinking that the 
great majority of the human race is destined to burn 
throughout eternity ; a horror of moral evil, considered 
as infinite evil, certainly formed part of the sentiment. 
Calvinistic predestination has consequences which revolt ; 
but in combating it we ought to bear in mind that the 
fundamental thought whence it was deduced was the as- 
surance of salvation — a thought which should be put on a 
better basis, but without which it is quite true to say that 
neither is peace possible nor energy durable. This, how- 
ever, ought to be said in exculpation of Parker : that he, 
more than most, suffered from the aberrations of an ex- 
clusive orthodoxy ; that all his life he had bitter experi- 
ence of that anti-Christianism which speaks of nothing 



THIS MAN WAS A PROPHET. 



153 



but gospel and grace, but which in reality hates the light, 
and does not allow the Holy Spirit to manifest himself on 
earth unless He wears the cockade of its particular form 
of opinion ; that he saw his purest intentions, his most 
generous deeds, his truest words, even his private life, 
odiously disfigured by that canting hypocrisy which 
pardons no one by whom it is unmasked. But all this 
does not prevent that, in pure justice, one ought to lay 
to his charge a certain iconoclastic rage, which is leagued 
with even his theories as to the origin and formation of 
religions. He knew that each form of religion bequeathed 
to us by the past was in its day true ; that is, that at a 
certain point of the development of the human mind it 
was the form which corresponded to that conception of 
God which was then possible. But if this is so, then had 
not Protestant orthodoxy — the last of the religious forms 
of the past — some right to that consideration with which, 
in touching pages, Parker speaks of the religion of the 
poor Cherokees ? It is also to be presumed that, viewed 
in the light of our modern European theology, Parker's 
religious ideas had a certain incompleteness and incon- 
sistency, which occasion numerous objections. Parker's 
eye was deep-sighted, but his mind was not scientifically 
speculative. I mean that, while with rare promptitude 
he seized the two extreme points of a series of connected 
truths, he was less happy in unrolling the intermediate 
links. Hence, occasionally defective proofs, which leave 
the reader's mind in suspense. Especially in his dis- 
courses on physical and moral evil, by the side of ad- 
mirable pieces of eloquence, do you find instances of this 
logical defect. Faithful on this point to the old method 
of religious evidence, he undertook to show that pain in 
itself was a good — that it was necessary to the order of 
things — without perceiving that the difficulty lies pre- 
cisely in the fact of such necessity. Perhaps a more 



154 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



philosophic, more severe way of contemplating that great 
problem would have preserved him from the bad taste 
into which he often fell, of calling God mother as well as 
father. Neither the one nor the other of the denomina- 
tions can be taken in metaphysical strictness ; and this is 
not a fault in our eyes, for God is not to be defined ; but 
the title mother has the inconvenience of throwing into 
relief the apparent antinomy which exists between the 
facts of experience and the religious affirmation of the 
Divine love. His views also touching the moral nature of 
man fail in respect of completeness, He does not seem to 
have thought of the grave question of determinism (moral 
necessity), and in his fiery reaction against Calvinism, 
which teaches the total corruption of human nature, he, 
always leaning to optimism, frequently forgot that in man 
the angel begins with the animal. A minute criticism 
might prolong these remarks, but to what good result ? 
We must not look for a professor of systematic theology 
in Theodore Parker ; he is an originator ; he is a singer 
inspired with the future. Tou may reject many of his 
ideas, but if you at all love religious liberty and social 
progress, you cannot but warmly sympathize with the 
man. It is much less a system of doctrine he will give 
you than impressions, consolations, hopes, courage, faith. 
His religion is not an abstract theory, but a spontaneous 
fact of his nature. As he himself remarked, " his head is 
not more natural to his body than his religion to his 
soul." His science, his erudition, very great in reality, 
and of the best grain, are not the servants, but the 
auxiliaries, the friends of his unshaken faith in the living 
God, and aid him to put away everything in the dogmas 
and institutions of former days which hindered him from 
enjoying the Heavenly Father's immediate presence, and 
from bathing in the waters of infinite love. 

Truth in Parker is, you feel, a necessity, a passion of 



THIS MAX WAS A PROPHET. 



155 



his nature, on account of which you pardon his outbursts, 
such is the courage and loyalty of his soul. Not with 
that intrepidity did the excellent Charming cut in the 
breached walls of the traditional faith a modest retreat, 
for which he ashed nothing more than a peaceful view of 
God's love and of man's heart. ZSTot with that clearness 
of design and operation did Schleiermacher, and the 
fastidious theologians of his school, raise constructions 
of the composite order, in which modern thought and the 
old dogmas blend together at the cost of so much trouble, 
and, sometimes, of so much plaster. "Without doubt many 
will continue to prefer the gentle moralist, the American 
xenelon (Channing), whom Mr Laboulaye has made 
known to Europe, or the unctuous Berlin preacher 
(Schleiermacher), who for a moment nattered himself 
with having reconciled science and orthodoxy in the 
depths of his religious sentiment. Let us not cease to 
admire all those admirable men, but let us also remember 
that the age is going forwards, that modern society in its 
imperious exigencies calls henceforth for more radical 
and exact solutions than the compromises which up till 
now have been accounted satisfactory. For that, need is 
there of the generous audacity of Parker, going straight 
ahead, without troubling himself about the dust he raises 
in passing through so many ruins, his eyes ever fixed on 
the everlasting light. Moreover it would be unjnst to 
see in him only the severe and energetic wrestler. There 
is in his nature — and this constitutes its charm — by the 
side of and below his revolutionary ardour, a pure and rich 
mysticism, delightful to contemplate. If Parker is some- 
times the dupe of his theoretic optimism, the reason is 
that his profound faith in the living God carries him 
beyond the poor world in which we live, and transports 
him before the time into the region of celestial harmonies. 
He is one of those thinkers who to unsparing censure of 



156 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



the men and the things of their own times, have joined 
the most serene anticipations of the definitive future of 
humanity. To the feverish agitations of his career as a 
reformer, his religion is that which the depths of the 
ocean are to the surface which the winds toss into con- 
fusion. After every tempest the inviolable calm of the 
abyss resumes its mastery over the entire mass which, 
again peaceful and smiling, reflects the boundless azure 
of the sky. 

To sum up ; Parker was essentially neither a moralist, 
nor a theologian, nor a philosopher; he was a prophet; 
and he is one of those contemporaneous appearances 
which, better than laborious researches, enable us to 
understand certain phenomena which at first sight one 
would think belonged exclusively to the past. What 
were the prophets in the bosom of Israel ? Wot 
diviners, not utterers of supernatural oracles, as is too 
often fancied. They were the organs of a grand idea, a 
simple, austere, even abstract idea, hidden in the heart of 
the national tradition, the idea of pure monotheism. In 
order to disengage that idea from what disfigured it, from 
the people's sins which caused it to be misapprehended, 
from the abuses of a priesthood and a throne interested, 
as they thought, in its remaining forgotten, the prophets 
persisted in their path of duty in spite of all opposition, 
and notwithstanding the ill-will of which they were the 
objects at every step, they came forth from the old soil 
of Israel, always with a deeper faith and a stouter heart. 
Tor their force sprang from the fact that at the bottom 
the spirit of Israel conspired with their spirit, and the 
more hostility that spirit encountered, the more did it 
become conscious of itself, and the more it asserted it- 
self clearly and demonstratively. Kings, priests, people, 
— all might find the prophets unendurable, but within a 
secret voice declared to them that nevertheless the pro- 



THIS MAX WAS A PROPHET. 



157 



phets were in the right. In the same way the spirit of 
Protestantism and of the American constitution took 
possession of Theodore Parker near his father's windmill, 
as of old the spirit of monotheism seized the prophet by 
the side of his plough or under his wild fig-trees. This 
man, who might have lived at ease beneath the shadow of 
his pines, in the midst of the flowers of his parsonage, 
and who goes out to preach from city to city " against 
the people's sins," — this man, overruled by an idea simple, 
grand, implicitly contained in the religion of his childhood 
and the constitution of his native land, — the idea of the 
free development of the human personality ; — who conse- 
crates his existence to the task ' of disembarrassing that 
idea from all the shackles created by interests, by vices, 
by sacerdotalism, by official prerogatives ; this man who 
refuses every compromise, who has no kind of indulgence 
for political or commercial necessities ; who, in spite of 
the many bitter cups he is forced to drink, joyously pro- 
claims on the house-tops, and foretells with an assur- 
ance that is disconcerted by nothing, the final victory of 
truth and liberty— This max is a Prophet. 

Not only for the United States was Parker a prophet. 
His patriotism was not exclusive, he felt himself to be 
literally a citizen of the world, and if he loved America so 
well it is because in her he saw the predestined soil where 
some day the ideal, dreamt of in our Europe, would re- 
ceive full realization. For us also, at the moment when 
long-established edifices and traditions nod to their fall, 
when it is anxiously asked whether they will not, in their 
fall, crush both those who uphold and those who assail 
them, such a man as Parker is a prophet of consolation 
and hope. He is right ; no cowardly fears ! whatever 
happen, man will remain man. In his very nature, such 
as Grod has made it, there will ever be the revelations 
and the promises which produce beautiful lives and 



158 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



beautiful deaths. And what more is needed? Happy 
the churches who shall find in their essential principles 
the right to open themselves without resolution to that 
imperishable Christianity of which Theodore Parker was 
the inspired preacher ! Many of his arguments will be 
refuted ; many of his opinions will fall into oblivion ; but 
the fundamental truth which he maintained, namely, that 
in the last analysis everything rests on conscience, that 
Grod reveals himself to whosoever seeks after Him, that 
the salvation of man and society, on earth as well as in 
heaven, depends not on dogmas, not on rites, not on 
miracles, not on priesthoods, not on books, but on " Christ 
in us," on a pure and honest heart, on a loving soul, on a 
will devoted and active : — this truth will live and cause us 
to live with it. And the church for which he prayed, which 
shall be spacious enough to contain all the sincere, all the 
disinterested, all the morally great, all the innocent, and 
all the repentant — that church truly universal, which in 
the past already unites so many noble souls separated by 
barriers now tottering — that church will never perish. 
Be not deluded by the anathemas which have long been 
hurled against the Christianity of the future. Such 
maledictions are always the companions of religious pro- 
gress, and certainly something would be lacking to the 
truth which tends to disengage itself from the errors of 
the past, if its appearance were not saluted by the thun- 
der-bolts hurled by reactions of all kinds. Even the death 
of the prophets would not for an hour retard the triumph 
of the truth which they preach, and the moment ever 
comes when humanity, confused and yet grateful, per- 
ceives that it was ignorantly stoning the organs of the 
Holy Spirit. Theodore Parker wrote from Santa Cruz 
to his people whom he was never to see again on earth, 
a long and touching farewell, from which we detach this 
passage : 



THIS MAN WAS A PROPHET. 159 

" In these tropic waters, not far off, in time of strife, on a dark 
night, but towards morning, an English ship-of-war once drew near 
what seemed a hostile vessel under sail. She hailed the stranger, 
who answered not ; then hailed again — no answer ; then fired a shot 
across the saucy bows, but still there was no reply ; next fired at her, 
amidships, but got not a word in return. Finally, the man-of-war 
cleared for action, began battle in earnest, serving the guns with 
British vigour, but found no return, save the rattle of shot rebound- 
ing and falling back into the heedless sea. Daylight presently came 
with tropic suddenness, and the captain found he spent his powder 
in battering a great rock in the ocean ! So, many a man has fought 
long against a truth which he fancied was but a floating whim, bound 
to yield to his caprice ; but, at last, the dawning light has shown him 
it was no passing ship, of timber and cordage and canvas, driven by 
the wind and tossed by the undulations of the sea, but a sail-eock, 
resting on the foundations of the world, and amenable neither to the 
men-of-war that sailed in the wind, nor yet to the undulation of the 
sea whereon they came and went. It is one thing to rejoice at the 
sickness and death of a short-lived heretic, but it is another and a 
little different, to alter the constitution of the universe, and put down 
a fact of spontaneous human consciousness, which, also, is a truth of 
God." 



EXTRACTS 

FEOM 

THE WRITINGS OF THEODORE PARKER. 



I. 

THE TKANSIENT AND PERMANENT IN CHKISTIANITY. 

" Heaven and earth shall pass away : but ray word shall not pass away." 
Luke xxi. 33. 

" In this sentence we have a very clear indication that Jesus of 
Nazareth believed the religion he taught would be eternal, that the 
substance of it would last for ever. Yet there are some who are 
affrighted by the faintest rustle which a heretic makes among the dry 
leaves of theology ; they tremble lest Christianity itself should perish 
without hope. Ever and anon the cry is raised, { The Philistines be 
upon us, and Christianity is in danger.' The least doubt respecting 
the popular theology, or the existing machinery of the church ; the 
least sign of distrust in the religion of the pulpit, or the religion of 
the street, is by some good men supposed to be at enmity with faith 
in Christ, and capable of shaking Christianity itself. On the other 
hand, a few bad men, and a few pious men, it is said, on both sides 
of the water, tell us the day of Christianity is past. The latter — it 
is alleged — would persuade us that, hereafter, Piety must take a new 
form ; the teachings of Jesus are to be passed by ; that religion is to 
wing her way sublime, above the flight of Christianity, far away, to- 
ward heaven, as the fledged eaglet leaves for ever the nest which 
sheltered his callow youth. Let us, therefore, devote a few moments 
to this subject, and consider what is transient in Christianity, and 
what is permanent therein. The topic seems not inappropriate to 
the times in which we live, or the occasion that calls us together. 

" Christ says, his word shall never pass away. Yet, at first sight, 



THE TRANSIENT AND PERMANENT IN CHRISTIANITY. 161 

nothing seems more fleeting than a word. It is an evanescent impulse 
of the most fickle element. It leaves no track where it went through 
the air. Yet to this, and this only, did Jesus intrust the truth where- 
with he came laden to the earth ; truth for the salvation of the world. 
He took no pains to perpetuate his thoughts : they were poured forth 
where occasion found him an audience — by the side of the lake, or a 
well ; in a cottage, or the temple ; in a fisher's boat, or the synagogue 
of the Jews. He founds no institution as a monument of his words. 
He appoints no order of men to preserve his bright and glad relations. 
He only bids his friends give freely the truth they had freely received. 
He did not even write his words in a book. With a noble confidence, 
the result of his abiding faith, he scattered them broadcast on the 
world, leaving the seed to its own vitality. He knew that what is 
of God cannot fail, for God keeps his own. He sowed his seed in the 
heart, and left it there, to be watered and warmed by the dew and 
the sun which heaven sends. He felt his words were for eternity. 
So he trusted them to the uncertain air ; and for 1800 years that 
faithful element has held them good — distinct as when first warm 
from his lips. Now they are translated into every human speech, 
and murmured in all earth's thousand tongues, from the pine forests 
of the Xorth to the palm groves of eastern Ind. They mingle, as it 
were, with the roar of a populous city, and join the chime of the 
desert sea. Of a Sabbath morn they are repeated from church to 
church, from isle to isle, and land to land, till their music goes round 
the world. These words have become the breath of the good, the 
hope of the wise, the joy of the pious, and that for many millions of 
hearts. They are the prayers of our churches ; our better devotion 
by fireside and fieldside ; the enchantment of our hearts. It is these 
words that still work wonders, to which the first recorded miracles 
were nothing in grandeur and utility. It is these which build our 
temples and beautify our homes. They raise our thoughts of sublim- 
ity ; they purify our ideal of purity ; they hallow our prayer for truth 
and love. They make beauteous and divine the life which plain men 
lead. They give wings to our aspirations. What charmers they 
are ! Sorrow is lulled at their bidding. They take the sting out of 
disease, and rob Adversity of his power to disappoint. They give 
health and wings to the pious soul, broken-hearted and shipwrecked 
in his voyage through life, and encourage him to tempt the perilous 
way once more. They make all things ours : Christ our brother ; 
time our servant ; death our ally, and the witness of our triumph. 
They reveal to us the presence of God, which else we might not have 
seen so clearly, in the first wind-flower of spring, in the falling of a 
sparrow, in the distress of a nation, in the sorrow or the rapture of 
the world. Silence the voice of Christianity, and the world is well- 
nigh dumb, for gone is that sweet music which kept in awe the rulers 
and the people, which cheers the poor widow in her lonely toil, and 

11 



162 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



comes like light through the windows of morning, to men who sit 
stooping and feeble, with failing eyes and a hungering heart. It is 
gone — all gone ! only the cold, bleak world left before them. 

" Such is the life of these words ; such the empire they have won 
for themselves over men's minds since they were spoken first. In 
the mean time, the words of great men and mighty, whose name 
shook whole continents, though graven in metal and stone, though 
stamped in institutions, and defended by whole tribes of priests and 
troops of followers — their words have gone to the ground, and the 
world gives back no echo of their voice. Meanwhile, the great 
works, also, of old times, castle, and tower, and town, their cities 
and their empires, have perished, and left scarce a mark on the 
bosom of the earth to show they once have been. The philosophy of 
the wise, the art of the accomplished, the song of the poet, the ritual 
of the priest, though honoured a^ divine in their day, have gone 
down a prey to oblivion. Silence has closed over them ; only their 
spectres now haunt the earth. A deluge of blood has swept over the 
nations ; a night of darkness, more deep than the fabled darkness of 
Egypt, has lowered down upon that flood, to destroy or to hide what 
the deluge had spared. But through all this the words of Christi- 
anity have come down to us from the lips of that Hebrew youth, 
gentle and beautiful as the light of a star, not spent by their journey 
through time and through space. They have built up a new civiliza- 
tion, which the wisest Gentile never hoped for, which the most pious 
Hebrew never foretold. Through centuries of wasting these words 
have flown on, like a dove in the storm, and now wait to descend on 
hearts pure and earnest, as the Father's Spirit, we are told, came 
down on his lowly Son. The old heavens and the old earth are 
indeed passed away, but the Word stands. Nothing shows clearer 
than this how fleeting is what man calls great, how lasting w T hat God 
pronounces true." 

After this homage rendered to the imperishable power 
of the gospel, the preacher comes to the numberless 
diversities that fill up the history of Christianity. He 
points out what an enormous distance separates the differ- 
ent conceptions of the gospel which have succeeded each 
other — a distance sometimes greater than "that which 
separates Mahomet from the Messiah or Jesus from Plato." 
Our conception of Christianity will also pass away. In 
actual Christianity, that is, in that portion of Christianity 
which is preached and believed, there seems to have been, 
ever since the time of its earthly founder, two elements, 



THE TRANSIENT AXD PERMANENT IN CHRISTIANITY. 163 

the one transient, the other permanent. The one is the 
thought, the folly, the uncertain wisdom, the theological 
notions, the impiety of man ; the other, the eternal truth 
of God. These two bear, perhaps, the same relation to 
each other that the phenomena of outward nature, such 
as sunshine and cloud, growth, decay, and reproduction, 
bear to the great law of nature, which underlies and sup- 
ports them all. As in that case more attention is com- 
monly paid to the particular phenomena than the general 
law, so in this case more is generally given to the transient 
in Christianity than to the permanent therein. Thus is 
it in the Christian Church that men are enamoured of 
forms and doctrines which may be fine and useful, but 
which in reality are the vestment and not the angel him- 
self." You may satisfy yourself of the variable and 
transitory character of theological doctrines by studying 
their history. Let us take an example in the idea men 
have formed for themselves of the authority of the Old 
and the Xew Testaments. There was a time when indi- 
viduals were condemned to the stake, whose sole crime 
was the assertion of astronomical and physical doctrines 
opposed to certain passages in the Bible, when every 
word of that collection of Hebrew writings was held to 
be miraculously inspired ; and how many absurd beliefs, 
of exorbitant pretensions, of gross and even immoral ideas 
of God have been founded on that authority which was 
considered absolute. Nevertheless neither Jesus nor 
Paul ascribed such a quality to the sacred books of the 
Jews. To-day criticism, even when but elementary, and 
the good sense of the people absolutely preclude a return 
to these errors. You may observe the same diversities and 
similar facts in regard to the New Testament. " An idol- 
atrous regard for the imperfect Scripture of God's word 
is the apple of Atalanta, which arrests theologians who 
are running for the land of divine truth." The modest 

11 * 



164 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



authors of the collection of New Testament writings 
never fancied they would receive the worship afterwards 
paid to them. At present opinions are changing in re- 
spect to them also, and are changing for the better. 
Nothing is more easy than to exhibit still more numerous 
diversities touching the nature of Jesus and his authority. 
Opinions varied much on this point among the earliest 
Christians, some declaring him a man, others raising him 
into God, while others placed him midway between the 
two. These diversities at length issued in the doctrine 
which in time gained for itself the name of orthodox, and 
which represents Christ as at once altogether man and 
altogether God. With the 16th century fresh diversities 
begin to arise. 

" No doubt the time will come when its true character shall be 
felt. Then it will be seen, that, amid all the contradictions of the 
Old Testament ; its legends, so beautiful as fictions, so appalling as 
facts ; amid its predictions that have never been fulfilled ; amid the 
puerile conceptions of God, which sometimes occur, and the cruel 
denunciations that disfigure both Psalm and Prophecy, there is a 
reverence for man's nature, a sublime trust in God, and a depth of 
piety, rarely felt in these cold northern hearts of ours. Then the 
devotion of its authors, the loftiness of their aim, and the majesty of 
their life, will appear doubly fair, and Prophet and Psalmist will 
warm our hearts as never before. Their voice will cheer the young 
and sanctify the grey-headed ; will charm us in the toil of life, and 
sweeten the cup Death gives us when he comes to shake off this 
mantle of flesh. Then will it be seen that the words of Jesus are the 
music of heaven, sung in an earthly voice, and the echo of these 
words in John and Paul owe their efficacy to their truth and their 
depth, and to no accidental matter connected therewith. Then can 
the Word, which was in the beginning and now is, find access to the 
innermost heart of man, and speak there as now it seldom speaks. 
Then shall the Bible — which is a whole library of the deepest and 
most earnest thoughts and feelings, and piety, and love, ever recorded 
in human speech — be read oftener than ever before, not with super- 
stition, but with reason, conscience, and faith, fully active. Then 
shall it sustain men bowed down with many sorrows ; rebuke sin, 
encourage virtue, sow the world broadcast and quick with the seed 
of love, that man may reap a harvest for life everlasting. 

" With all the obstacles men have thrown in its path, how much 



TEE TKAUSIB5TT AND PERMANENT IN CHRISTIANITY. 165 

has the Bible done for mankind ! No abuse has deprived us of all its 
blessings. You trace its path across the world from the day of 
Pentecost to this day. As a river springs up in the heart of a sandy 
continent, having its father in the skies, and its birth-place in dis- 
tant, unknown mountains ; as the stream rolls on, enlarging itself, 
making in that arid waste a belt of verdure wherever it turns its 
way ; creating palm groves and fertile plains, where the smoke of 
the cottager curls up at eventide, and marble cities send the gleam 
of their splendour far into the sky ; such has been the course of the 
Bible on the earth. Despite of idolaters bowing to the dust before 
it, it has made a deeper mark on the world than the rich and beauti- 
ful literature of all the heathen. The first book of the Old Testament 
tells man he is made in the image of God; the first of the New 
Testament gives us the motto, Be perfect as your Father in heaven. 
Higher words were never spoken. How the truths of the Bible have 
blessed us ! There is not a boy on all the hills of New England ; 
not a girl born in the filthiest cellar which disgraces a capital in 
Europe, and cries to God against the barbarism of modem civiliza- 
tion ; not a boy nor a girl all Christendom through — but their lot is 
made better by that great book. 

" Doubtless the time will come when men shall see Christ also as 
he is. Well might he still say, ' Have I been so long with you, and 
yet hast thou not known me ? ' No ! we have made him an idol, 
have bowed the knee before him, saying, ' Hail, king of the Jews ! ' 
called him ' Lord, Lord ! ' but done not the things which he said. 
The history of the Christian world might well be summed up in one 
word of the evangelist — ' and there they crucified him ; 5 for there 
has never been an age when men did not crucify the Son of God 
afresh. But if error prevail for a time and grow old in the world, 
truth will triumph at the last, and then we shall see the Son of God 
as he is. Lifted up, he shall draw all nations unto him. Then will 
men understand the word of Jesus, which shall not pass away. Then 
shall we see and love the divine life that he lived. How vast has 
his influence been ! How his spirit wrought in the hearts of his 
disciples, rude, selfish, bigoted, as at first they were ! How it has 
wrought in the world ! His words judge the nations. The wisest 
son of man has not measured their height. They speak to what is 
deepest in profound men, what is holiest in good men, what is di- 
vinest in religious men. They kindle anew the flame of devotion in 
hearts long cold. They are spirit and life. His truth was not de- 
rived from Moses and Solomon ; but the light of God shone through 
him, not coloured, not bent aside. His life is the perpetual rebuke 
of all time since. It condemns ancient civilization ; it condemns 
modern civilization. Wise men we have since had, and good men ; 
but this Galilean youth strode before the world whole thousands of 
years, so much of Divinity was in him. His words solve the ques- 



166 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



tions of this present age. In him the Godlike and the human met 
and embraced, and a divine life was born. Measure him by the 
world's greatest sons — how poor they are ! Try him by the best of 
men — how little and low they appear ! Exalt him as much as we 
may, we shall yet, perhaps, come short of the mark. But still was 
he not our brother ; the son of man, as we are ; the Son of God, like 
ourselves ? His excellence — was it not human excellence ? His 
wisdom, love, piety — sweet and celestial as they were — are they not 
what we also may attain ? In him, as in a mirror, we may see the 
image of God, and go on from glory to glory, till we are changed into 
the same image, led by the spirit which enlightens the humble. 
Viewed in this way, how beautiful is the life of Jesus ! Heaven has 
come down to earth, or, rather, earth has become heaven. The Son 
of God, come of age, has taken possession of his birthright. The 
brightest revelation is this — of what is possible for all men, if not 
now, at least hereafter. How pure is his spirit, and how encouraging 
his words I ' Lowly sufferer,' he seems to say, ' see how I bore the 
cross. Patient labourer, be strong ; see how I toiled for the unthank- 
ful and the merciless. Mistaken sinner, see of what thou art capable. 
Else up, and be blessed.' 

" But if, as some early Christians began to do, you take a heathen 
view, and make him a God, the Son of God in a peculiar and ex- 
clusive sense, much of the significance of his character is gone. His 
virtue has no merit, his love no feeling, his cross no burthen, his 
agony no pain. His death is an illusion, his resurrection but a show. 
For if he were not a man, but a god, what are all these things ? 
what his words, his life, his excellence of achievement ? It is all 
nothing, weighed against the illimitable greatness of Him who created 
the worlds and fills up all time and space ! Then his resignation is 
no lesson, his life no model, his death no triumph to you or me, who 
are not gods, but mortal men, that know not what a day shall bring 
forth, and walk by faith ' dim sounding on our perilous way.' Alas ! 
we have despaired of man, and so cut off his brightest hope. 

" In respect of doctrines, as well as forms, we see all is transitory. 
' Everywhere is instability and insecurity.' Opinions have changed 
most on points deemed most vital. Could we bring up a Christian 
teacher of any age — from the Gth to the 14th century, for example, 
though a teacher of undoubted soundness of faith, whose word filled 
the churches of Christendom — clergymen would scarce allow him to 
kneel at their altar, or sit down with them at the Lord's table. 
His notions of Christianity could not be expressed in our forms, nor 
could our notions be made intelligible to his ears. The questions of 
his age, those on which Christianity was thought to depend — ques- 
tions which perplexed and divided the subtle doctors — are no ques- 
tions to us. The quarrels which then drove wise men mad, now only 
excite a smile or a tear, as we are disposed to laugh or weep at the 



THE TRANSIENT AND PERMANENT IN CHRISTIANITY. 167 



frailty of man. We have other straws of our own to quarrel for. 
Their ancient books of devotion do not speak to us : their theology is 
a vain word. To look hack but a short period, the theological specu- 
lations of our fathers during the last two centuries ; their ; practical 
divinity ; ' even the sermons written by genius and piety — are, with 
rare exceptions, found unreadable : such a change is there in the 
doctrines. 

Now who shall tell us that the change is to stop here ; that this 
sect or that, or even all sects united, have exhausted the river of life, 
and received it all in their canonized urns, so that we need draw no 
more out of the eternal well, but get refreshment nearer at hand ? 
Who shall tell us that another age will not smile at our doctrines, 
disputes, and unchristian quarrels about Christianity, and make wide 
the mouth at men who walked brave in orthodox raiment, delighting 
to blacken the names of heretics, and repeat again the old charge, 
' He hath blasphemed ' ? Who shall tell us they will not weep at the 
folly of all such as fancied truth shone only into the contracted nook 
of their school, or sect, or coterie ? Men of other times may look 
down equally on the heresy-hunters, and men hunted for heresy, and 
wonder at both. The men of all ages before us were quite as confi- 
dent as we, that their opinion was truth, that their notion was Chris- 
tianity and the whole thereof. The men who lit the fires of persecu- 
tion, from the first martyr to Christian bigotry down to the last 
murder of the innocents, had no doubt their opinion was divine. The 
contest about transubstantiation, and the immaculate purity of the 
Hebrew and Greek texts of the Scriptures, was waged with a bitter- 
ness unequalled in these days. The Protestant smiles at one, the 
Catholic at the other, and men of sense wonder at both. It might 
teach us all a lesson, at least of forbearance. No doubt an age will 
come in which ours shall be reckoned a period of darkness — like the 
6th century — when men groped for the wall, but stumbled and fell, 
because they trusted a transient notion, not an eternal truth ; an age 
when temples were full of idols, set up by human folly ; an age in 
which Christian light had scarce begun to shine into men's hearts. 
But while this change goes on, while one generation of opinions passes 
away, and another rises up, Christianity itself, that pure religion, 
which exists eternal in the constitution of the soul and the mind of 
God, is always the same. The word that was before Abraham, in 
the very beginning, will not change, for that word is Truth, From 
this Jesus subtracted nothing; to this he added nothing. But he 
came to reveal it as the secret of God, that cunning men could not 
understand, but which filled the souls of men meek and lowly of 
heart. This truth we owe to God ; the revelation thereof to Jesus, 
our elder brother, God's chosen son. 

" To turn away from the disputes of the Catholics and the Pro- 
testants, of the Unitarian and the Trinitarian of old school and new 



163 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



school, and come to the plain words of Jesus of Xazareth, Christi- 
anity is a simple thing, very simple. It is absolute, pure morality ; 
absolute, pure religion ; the love of man ; the love of God acting 
without let or hindrance. The only creed it lays down is the great 
truth which springs up spontaneous in the holy heart — there is a 
God. Its watchword is, Be perfect as your Father in heaven. The 
only form it demands is a divine life ; doing the best thing in the 
best way, from the highest motives ; perfect obedience to the great 
law of God. Its sanction is the voice of God in your heart ; the 
perpetual presence of Him who made us and the stars over our head ; 
Christ and the Father abiding within us. All this is very simple — a 
little child can understand it ; very beautiful — the loftiest mind can 
find nothing so lovely. Try it by reason, conscience, and faith — 
things highest in man's nature — we see no redundance, we feel no 
deficiency. Examine the particular duties it enjoins ; humility, 
reverence, sobriety, gentleness, charity, forgiveness, fortitude, resigna- 
tion, faith, and active love ; try the whole extent of Christianity, so 
well summed up in the command, ' Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind 
— thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself ; ' and is there anything 
therein that can perish? Xo, the very opponents of Christianity 
have rarely found fault with the teachings of Jesus. The end of 
Christianity seems to be to make all men one with God as Christ was 
one with Him ; to bring them to such a state of obedience and good- 
ness, that we shall think divine thoughts and feel divine sentiments, 
and so keep the law of God by living a life of truth and love. Its 
means are purity and prayer ; getting strength from God, and using 
it for our fellow-men as well as ourselves. It allows perfect freedom. 
It does not demand all men to think alike, but to think uprightly, 
and get as near as possible at truth ; not all men to live alike, but to 
live holy, and get as near as possible to a life perfectly divine. Christ 
set up no Pillars of Hercules, beyond which men must not sail the 
sea in quest of truth. He says, ' I have many things to say unto 
you, but ye cannot bear them now. . . Greater works than these shall 
ye do.' Christianity lays no rude hand on the sacred peculiarity of 
individual genius and character. But there is no Christian sect 
which does not fetter a man. It would make all men think alike, or 
smother their conviction in silence. "Were all men Quakers or 
Catholics, Unitarians or Baptists, there would be much less diversity 
of thought, character, and life, less of truth active in the world, than 
now. But Christianity gives us the largest liberty of the sons of 
God ; and were all men Christians after the fashion of Jesus, this 
variety would be a thousand times greater than now : for Christi- 
anity is not a system of doctrines, but rather a method of attaining 
oneness with God. It demands, therefore, a good life of piety within, 



THE TRANSIENT AND PERMANENT IN CHRISTIANITY. 169 

of purity without, and gives the promise that whoso does God's will 
shall know of God's doctrine. 

,; In an age of corruption, as all ages are, Jesus stood and looked 
up to God. There was nothing between lihn and the Father of all ; 
no old world, be it of Closes or Esaias, of a living Eabbi or Sanhe- 
drim of Eabbis ; no sin or perverseness of the finite will. As the re- 
sult of this virgin purity of soul and perfect obedience, the light of 
God shone down into the very deeps of his soul, bringing all of the 
Godhead which flesh can receive. He would have us do the same ; 
worship with nothing between us and God ; act, think, feel, live, in 
perfect obedience to Him ; and we never are Christians as he was 
the Christ, until we worship, as Jesus did, with no mediator, with 
nothing between us and the Father of all. He felt that God's word 
was in him ; that he was one with God. He told what he saw — the 
truth : he lived what he felt — a life of love. The truth he brought 
to light must have been always the same before the eyes of all-seeing 
God, 19 centuries before Christ, or 19 centuries after him. A life 
supported by the principle and quickened by the sentiment of religion, 
if true to both, is always the same thing in Xazareth or Xew England. 
Now that divine man received these truths from God ; was illumined 
more clearly by ' the light that lighteneth ever} 7 man ; ' combined or 
involved all the truths of religion and morality in his doctrine, and 
made them manifest in his life. Then his words and example passed 
into the world, and can no more perish than the stars be wiped out 
of the sky. The truths he taught ; his doctrines respecting man and 
God ; the relation between man and man, and man and God, with 
the duties that grow out of that relation — are always the same, and 
can never change till man ceases to be man, and creation vanishes 
into nothing. Xo ; forms and opinions change and perish ; but 
the word of God cannot fail. The form religion takes, the doctrines 
wherewith she is girded, can never be the same in any two centuries 
or two men ; for since the sum of religious doctrines is both the re- 
sult and the measure of a man's total growth in wisdom, virtue, and 
piety, and since men will always differ in these respects, so religious 
doctrines and forms will always differ, always be transient, as Chris- 
tianity goes forth and scatters the seed she bears in her hand. But 
the Christianity holy men fe-el in the heart, the Christ that is bom 
within us, is always the same thing to each soul that feels it. This 
differs only in degree, and not in kind, from age to age, and man to 
man. There is something in Christianity which no sect, from the 
' Ebionites ' to the i Latter-Day Saints,' ever entirely overlooked. 
This is that common Christianity which burns in the hearts of pious 
men. 

" Eeal Christianity gives men new life. It is the growth and per- 
fect action of the Holy Spirit God puts into the sons of men It 



170 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



makes us outgrow any form or any system of doctrines we have de- 
vised, and approach still closer to the truth. It would lead us to 
take what help we can find. It would make the Bible our servant, 
not our master. It would teach us to profit by the wisdom and 
piety of David and Solomon, but not to sin their sins, nor bow to 
their idols. It would make us revere the holy words spoken by 
' godly men of old,' but revere still more the word of God spoken 
through conscience, reason, and faith, as the holiest of all. It would 
not make Christ the despot of the soul, but the brother of all men. 
It would not tell us that even he had exhausted the fulness of God, 
so that he could create none greater ; for with Him ' all things are 
possible,' and neither Old Testament nor New Testament ever hints 
that creation exhausts the Creator. Still less would it tell us, the 
wisdom, the piety, the love, the manly excellence of Jesus, was the 
result of miraculous agency alone, bat that it was won, like the ex- 
cellence of humbler men, by faithful obedience to Him who gave his 
Son such ample heritage. It would point to him as our brother, who 
went before, like the good shepherd, to charm us with the music of 
his words, and with the beauty of his life to tempt us up the steeps 
of mortal toil, within the gate of heaven. It would have us make 
the kingdom of God on earth, and enter more fittingly the kingdom 
on high. It would lead us to form Christ in the heart, on which 
Paul laid such stress, and work out our salvation by this. For it is 
not so much by the Christ who lived so blameless and beautiful 18 
centuries ago, that we are saved directly, but by the Christ we form 
in our hearts and live out in our daily life, that we save ourselves, 
God working with us both to will and to do. 

" Compare the simpleness of Christianity, as Christ sets it forth 
on the Mount, with what is sometimes taught and accepted in that 
honoured name ; and what a difference ! One is of God ; one is of 
man. There is something in Christianity which sects have not 
reached ; something that will not be won, we fear, by theological 
battles, or the quarrels of pious men ; still we may rejoice that Christ 
is preached in any way. The Christianity of sects, of the pulpit, of 
society, is ephemeral — a transitory fly. It will pass off and be forgot. 
Some new form will take its place, suited to the aspect of the 
changing times. Each will represent something of truth, but no one 
the whole. It seems the whole race of man is needed to do justice 
to the whole of truth, as ' the whole Church, to preach the whole 
Gospel.' Truth is intrusted for the time to a jDerishable ark of 
human contrivance. Though often shipwrecked, she always comes 
safe to land, and is not changed by her mishap. That pure ideal re- 
ligion which Jesus saw on the mount of his vision, and lived out in 
the lowly life of a Galilean peasant ; which transforms his cross into 
an emblem of all that is holiest on earth ; which makes sacred the 
ground he trod, and is dearest to the best of men, most true to what 



THE TRANSIENT AND PERMANENT IX CHRISTIANITY. 171 



is truest in them — cannot pass away. Let men improve never so far 
in civilization, or soar never so high on the wings of religion and 
love, they can never outgo the flight of truth and Christianity. It 
will always be above them. It is as if we were to fly towards a star, 
which becomes larger and more bright the nearer we approach, till 
we enter and are absorbed in its glory. 

" If we look carelessly on the ages that have gone by, or only on 
the surfaces of things as they come up before us, there is reason to 
fear ; for we confound the truth of God with the word of man. So 
at a distance the cloud and the mountain seem the same. When 
the drift changes with the passing wind, an unpractised eye might 
fancy the mountain itself was gone. But the mountain stands to 
catch the clouds, to win the blessing they bear, and send it down to 
moisten the fainting violet, to form streams which gladden valley and 
meadow, and sweep on at last to the sea in deep channels, laden with 
fleets. Thus the forms of the church, the creeds of the sects, the 
conflicting opinions of teachers, float round the sides of the Christian 
mount, and swell and toss, and rise and fall, and dart their lightning, 
and roll their thunder, but they neither make nor mar the mount it- 
self. Its lofty summit far transcends the tumult, knows nothing of 
the storm which roars below, but burns with rosy light at evening 
and at morn, gleams in the splendours of the mid-day sun, sees his 
light when the long shadows creep over plain and moorland, and all 
night long has its head in the heavens, and is visited by troops of 
stars which never set, nor veil their face to aught so pure and high. 

" Let then the transient pass, fleet as it will ; and may God send 
us some new manifestation of the Christian faith, that shall stir 
men's hearts as they were never stirred ; some new word, which 
shall teach us what we are, and renew us all in the image of God ; 
some better life, that shall fulfil the Hebrew prophecy, and pour out 
the spirit of God on young men and maidens, and old men and chil- 
dren ; which shall realize the word of Christ, and give us the Com- 
forter, who shall reveal all needed things ! There are Simeons enough 
in the cottages and churches of New England, plain men and pious 
women, who wait for the consolation, and would die in gladness if 
their expiring breath could stir quicker the wings that bear him on. 
There are men enough, sick and 1 bowed down, in no wise able to 
lift up themselves,' who would be healed could they kiss the hand of 
their Saviour, or touch but the hem of his garment ; men who look 
up and are not fed, because they ask bread from heaven and water 
from the rock, not traditions or fancies, Jewish or heathen, or new 
or old ; men enough who, with throbbing hearts, pray for the spirit 
of healing to come upon the waters, which other than angels have 
long kept in trouble ; men enough who have lain long time sick of 
theology, nothing bettered by many physicians, and are now dead, 
too dead to bury their dead, who would come out of their graves at 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



the glad tidings, (iod send us a real religious life, which shall pluck 
blindness out of the heart, and make us better fathers, mothers, and 
children ! a religious life, that shall go with us where we go, and 
make every home the house of God, every act acceptable as a prayer. 
We would work Tor this, and pray lor it, though we wept tears of 
blood while we prayed.* 



* " Collected Works," vol. viii. p. 1, et seq. 



173 



n. 

RELIGIOUS JOY. 
A Discourse of Matters pertaining to Religion. Book I. chap. vii. sect. 3. 

" No doubt there is joy in the success of earthly schemes. There 
is joy to the miser as he satiates his prurient palm with gold : there 
is joy for the fool of fortune when his gaming brings a prize. But 
what is it ? His request is granted ; but leanness enters his soul. 
There is delight in feasting on the bounties of Earth, the garment in 
which God veils the brightness of His face ; in being filled with the 
fragrant loveliness of fi owers ; the song of birds ; the hum of bees ; 
the sounds of ocean ; the rustle of the summer wind, heard at even- 
ing in the pine-tops ; in the cool running brooks ; in the majestic 
sweep of undulating hills; the grandeur of untamed forests; the 
majesty of the mountain: in the morning's virgin beauty; in the 
maternal grace of evening, and the sublime and mystic pomp of 
night. Nature's silent sympathy — how beautiful it is ! 

" There is joy, no doubt there is joy, to the mind of Genius, when 
thought bursts on him as the tropic sun rending a cloud ; when long 
trains of ideas sweep through his soul, like constellated orbs before 
an angel's eye ; when sublime thoughts and burning words rush to 
the heart; when Nature unveils her secret truth, and some great 
Law breaks, all at once, upon a Newton's mind, and chaos ends in 
light ; when the hour of his inspiration and the joy of his genius is 
on him, 'tis then that this child of Heaven feels a godlike delight. 
'Tis sympathy with Truth. 

" There is a higher and more tranquil bliss when heart communes 
with heart ; when two souls unite in one, like mingling dew-drops on 
a rose, that scarcely touch the flower, but mirror the heavens in their 
little orbs : when perfect love transforms two souls, either man's or 
woman's, each to the other's image ; when one heart beats in two 
bosoms ; one spirit speaks with a divided tongue ; when the same 
eoul is eloquent in mutual eyes — there is a rapture deep, serene, 
heart-felt, and abiding in this mysterious fellow-feeling with a con- 
genial soul, which puts to shame the cold sympath}- of Nature, and 



174 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



the ecstatic but short-lived bliss of Genius in his high and burning 
hour. 

" But the welfare of Eeligion is more than each or all of these. 
The glad reliance that comes upon the man ; the sense of trust ; a 
rest with God ; the soul's exceeding peace ; the universal harmony ; 
the infinite within ; sympathy with the Soul of All — is bliss that 
words cannot portray. He only knows, who feels. The speech of a 
prophet cannot tell the tale. No : not if a seraph touched his lips 
with fire. In the high hour of religious visitation from the living 
God, there seems to be no separate thought ; the tide of universal 
life sets through the soul. The thought of self is gone. It is a little 
accident to be a king or a clown, a parent or a child. Man is at one 
with God, and He is All in All. Neither the loveliness of Nature, 
neither the joy of Genius, nor the sweet breathing of congenial hearts, 
that make delicious music as they beat, — neither one nor all of these 
can equal the joy of the religious soul that is at one with God, so 
full of peace that prayer is needless. This deeper joy gives an added 
charm to the former blessings. Nature undergoes a new transform- 
ation. A story tells that when the rising sun fell on Memnon's 
statue it wakened music in that breast of stone. Religion does the 
same with Nature. From the shining snake to the waterfall, it is all 
eloquent of God. As to John in the Apocalypse, there stands an 
angel in the sun ; the seraphim hang over every flower : God speaks 
in each little grass that fringes a mountain rock. Then even Genius 
is wedded to a greater bliss. His thoughts shine more brilliant, 
when set in the light of Eeligion. Friendship and Love it renders in- 
finite. The man loves God when he but loves his friend. This is 
the joy Eeligion gives; its perennial rest; its everlasting life. It 
comes not by chance. It is the possession of such as ask and toil 
and toil and ask. It is withheld from none, as other gifts. Nature 
tells little to the deaf, the blind, the rude. Every man is not a 
genius, and has not his jo3 T . Few men can find a friend that is the 
world to them. That triune sympathy is not for every one. But 
this welfare of Eeligion, the deepest, truest, the everlasting, the 
sympathy with God, lies within the reach of all his sons." * 



* " Collected Works," vol. i. pp. 98—100. 



175 



III. 

THE TEUE IDEA OF A CHRISTIAN CHUECH. 

" For nearly a year we have assembled within these walls from 
week to week. — I think not idly ; I know you have not come for 
any trivial end. You have recently made a formal organization of 
yourselves for religious action. To-day, at your request, I enter regu- 
larly on a ministry in the midst of you. What are we doing ? what 
do we design to do ? We are here to establish a Christian church ; 
and a Christian church, as I understand it, is a body of men and 
women united together in a common desire of religious excellence, 
and with a common regard for Jesus of Nazareth, regarding him as 
the noblest example of morality and religion, — as the model, there- 
fore, in this respect for us. Such a church may have many rites, as 
our Catholic brothers, or but few rites, as our Protestant brothers, or 
no rites at all, as our brothers the Friends. It may be, nevertheless, 
a Christian church ; for the essential of substance, which makes it a 
religious body, is the union for the purpose of cultivating love to 
God and man ; and the essential of form, which makes it a Christian 
body, is the common regard for Jesus, considered as the highest re- 
presentative of God that we know. It is not the form, either of 
ritual or of doctrine, but the spirit which constitutes a Christian 
church. A staff may sustain an old man, or a young man may bear 
it in his hands as a toy, but walking is walking, though the man 
have no staff for ornament or support. A Christian spirit may exist 
under rituals and doctrines the most diverse. It were hard to say a 
man is not a Christian, because he believes in the doctrine of the 
Trinity, or the Pope, while Jesus taught no such doctrine ; foolish to 
say one is no Christian because he denies the existence of a Devil, 
though Jesus believed it. To make a man's Christian name depend 
on a belief of all that is related by the numerous writers in the 
Bible, is as absurd as to make that depend on a belief in all the 
words of Luther or Calvin, or St Augustine. It is not for me to 
say a man is not theoretically a Christian because he believes that 
Slavery is a Divine and Christian institution ; that AVar is grate- 
ful to God — saying, with the Old Testament, that God himself 4 is 
a man of war,' who teaches men to fight, and curses such as 



176 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



refuse ; — or because he believes that all men are born totally de- 
praved, and the greater part of them are to be damned everlast- 
ingly by ' a jealous God, 1 who is ' angry with the wicked every day,' 
and that the few are to be ' saved,' only because God unjustly 
punished an innocent man for their sake. I will not say a man is 
not a Christian though he believe all the melancholy things related 
of God in some parts of the Old Testament, yet I know few doctrines 
so hostile to real religion as these have proved themselves. In our 
day it has strangely come to pass that a little sect, themselves hooted 
at and called ' Infidels ' by the rest of Christendom, deny the name 
of Christian to such as publicly reject the miracles of the Bible. 
Time will doubtless correct this error. Fire is fire, and ashes ashes, 
say what we may ; each will work after its kind. Now if Christi- 
anity be the absolute religion, it must allow all beliefs that are true, 
and it may exist and be developed in connection with all forms con- 
sistent with the absolute religion, and the degree thereof represented 
by Jesus. 

" The action of a Christian church seems to be twofold : first on 
its own members, and then, through their means, on others out of 
its pale. Let a word be said of each in its order. If I were to ask 
you why you came here to-day ? why you have often come to this 
house hitherto ? — the serious amongst you would say : That we 
might become better ; more manly; upright before God and down- 
right before men ; that we might be Christians, men good and pious 
after the fashion Jesus spoke of. The first design of such a church 
then is to help ourselves become Christians. Now the substance of 
Christianity is Piety — Love to God, and Goodness— Love to men. 
It is a religion, the germs whereof are born in your heart, appearing 
in your earliest childhood ; which are developed just in proportion as 
you become a man, and are indeed the standard measure of your life. 
As the primeval rock lies at the bottom of the sea and appears at the 
top of the loftiest mountains, so in a finished character religion un- 
derlies all and crowns all. Christianity, to be perfect and entire, 
demands a complete manliness ; the development of the whole man, 
mind, conscience, heart, and soul. It aims not to destroy the sacred 
peculiarities of individual character. It cherishes and developes 
them in their perfection, leaving Paul to be Paul, not Peter, and John 
to be John, not Jude nor James. We are born different, into a world 
where unlike things are gathered together, that there may be a 
special work for each. Christianity respects this diversity in men, aim- 
ing not to undo but further God's will ; not fashioning all men after 
one pattern, to think alike, act alike, be alike, even look alike. It is 
something far other than Christianity which demands that. A 
Christian church then should put no fetters on the man ; it should 
have unity of purpose, but with the most entire freedom for the indi- 
vidual. When you sacrifice the man to the mass in church or state, 



_ «. » 0, , CH,, IIiS OHUBCH. 177 

church or state becomes an offence, a stumbling-block in the way of 
progress, and must end or mend. The greater the variety of indi- 
vidualities in church or state, the better is it, so long as all are really 
manly, humane, and accordant. A church must needs be partial, 
not catholic, where all men think alike, narrow and little. Your 
church-organ, to have compass and volume, must have pipes of va- 
rious sound, and the skilful artist destroys none, but tunes them all 
to harmony ; if otherwise, he does not understand his work. In be- 
coming Christians let us not cease to be men ; nay, we cannot be 
Christians unless we are men first. It were unchristian to love 
Christianity better than the truth, or Christ better than man." 

After having shown in what sense Jesus ought to be 
the model of the man who wishes to become a Christian, 
the preacher reverts to the question of liberty of action 
in the unity of an object. 

" The great problem of church and state is this : To produce 
unity of action and yet leave individual freedom not disturbed ; to 
balance into harmonious proportions the mass and the man, the 
centripetal and centrifugal powers, as. by God's wondrous, living 
mechanism, they are balanced in the worlds above. In the state 
we have done this more wisely than any nation heretofore. In the 
churches it remains yet to do. But man is equal to all which God 
appoints for him. His desires are ever proportionate to his duty and 
his destinies. The strong cry of the nations for liberty, a craving as 
of hungry men for bread and water, shows what liberty is worth and 
what it is destined to do. Allow freedom to think, and there will be 
truth ; freedom to act, and we shall have heroic works ; freedom to 
live and be, and we shall have love to men and love to God. The 
world's history proves that, and our own history. Jesus, our model 
man, was the freest the world ever saw ! " 

It follows that a true church will aid its members to 
develope themselves religiously and morally by searching 
after truth, by progress in the piety of the heart, by active 
beneficence. They ought to communicate inspirations 
from one to another, furnish all with instruction, good 
counsel, and the special aid each may need. 

But the church has also an outdoor commission to ac- 
complish. 

A Christian church should be a means of reforming the world, 
of forming it after the pattern of Christian ideas. It should there- 

12 



17S 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



fore bring up the sentiments of the times, the ideas of the times, and 
the actions of the times, to judge them by the universal standard. 
In this way it will learn much and be a living church, that grows 
with the advance of men's sentiments, ideas, and actions, and while 
it keeps the good of the past will lose no brave spirit of the present 
day. It can teach much ; now moderating the fury of men, then 
quickening their sluggish steps. We expect the sins of commerce 
to be winked at in the street ; the sins of the state to be applauded 
on election days and in a Congress, or on the fourth of July ; we are 
used to hear them called the righteousness of the nation. There 
they are often measured by the avarice or the ambition of greedy 
men. You expect them to be tried by passion, which looks only to 
immediate results and partial ends. Here they are to be measured 
by Conscience and Reason, which look to permanent results and 
universal ends ; to be looked at with reference to the Laws of 
God, the everlasting ideas on which alone is based the welfare of the 
world. Here they are to be examined in the light of Christianity it- 
self. If the church be true, many things which seem gainful in the 
street and expedient in the senate-house, will here be set down as 
wrong, and ail gain which comes therefrom seen to be but a loss. 
If there be a public sin in the land, if a lie invade the state, it is for 
the church to give the alarm ; it is here that it may war on lies and 
sins ; the more widely they are believed in and practised, the more 
are they deadly, the more to be opposed. Here let no false idea or 
false action of the public go without exposure or rebuke. But let no 
noble heroism of the times, no noble man, pass by without due honour. 
If it is a good thing to honour dead saints and the heroism of our 
fathers ; it is a better thing to honour the saints of to-day, the live 
heroism of men who do the battle, when that battle is all around us. 
I know a few such saints, here and there a hero of that stamp, and I 
will not wait till they are dead and classic before I call them so and 
honour them as such." 

If a church is to rise to the height of its mission, it 
must radiate around it an enlightened beneficence. It 
must promote popular education, combat pauperism, 
inebriety, and care for those who are criminal and aban- 
doned. In particular it has a national duty to perform 
in the bosom of the Union. 

" Did not Christ say, Whatsoever you would that men should do 
unto you, do you even so unto them ; and are there not three million 
brothers of yours and mine in bondage here, the hopeless sufferers of 
a savage doom ; debarred from the civilisation of our age, the bar- 
barians of the 19th century ; shut out from the pretended religion 



of Christendom, the heathens of a Christian land ; chained down 
from the liberty unalienable in man, the slaves of a Christian repub- 
lic ? Does not a cry of indignation ring out from every legislature in 
the Xorth ; does not the press war with its million throats, and a 
voice of indignation go up from East and West, out from the hearts 
of freemen ? Oh, no. There is none of that cry against the mighti- 
est sin of this age. The rock of Plymouth, sanctified by the feet 
which led a nation's way to freedom's large estate, provokes no more 
voice than the rottenest stone in all the mountains of the West. 
The few that speak a manly word for truth and everlasting right, are 
called fanatics ; bid be still, lest they spoil the market ! Great God ! 
and has it come to this, that men are silent over such a sin 1 ' Tis 
even so. Then it must be that every church which dares assume the 
name of Christ, that dearest name to men, thunders and lightens on 
this hideous wrong ! That is not so. The church is dumb, while 
the state is only silent ; while the servants of the people are only 
asleep, ' God's ministers ' are dead ! 

" In the midst of all these wrongs and sins, the crimes of men, 
society, and the state, amid popular ignorance, pauperism, crime, and 
war, and slavery too — is the church to say nothing, do nothing ; no- 
thing for the good of such as feel the wrong, nothing to save them 
who do the wrong ? Men tell us so in word and deed ; that way 
alone is ' safe ! ' If I thought so, I would never enter the church but 
once again, and then to bow my shoulders to their manliest work, to 
heave down its strong pillars, arch and dome, and roof and wall, 
steeple and tower, though like Samson I buried myself under the 
ruins of that temple which profaned the worship of God most high, 
of God most loved. I would do this in the name of man ; in the 
name of Christ I would do it ; yes, in the dear and blessed name of 
God." 

This is what a church ought to be and to do, if it 
wishes to be not merely a school of theology but a focus 
of religion. You do not become members of churches in 
order to remain idle. Persecution has changed its entice- 
ments and methods. No longer are the fires of Smith- 
field kindled, no longer are confessors sent to the galleys ; 
but the martyrdom of valiant souls which brave calumny, 
desertion, contempt, that they may accomplish the good 
1 which our age requires, is not less real. The future will 
still see the mass seek all over the world marble white 
enough to build tombs for the prophets which its fathers 

12 * 



180 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



slew. A true church of the 19th century must be that of 
its generous precursors, else it is dead. " A true church 
will always be the church of martyrs. The ancients com- 
menced every great work with a victim ! "We do not call 
it so ; but the sacrifice is demanded, got ready, and offered 
by unconscious priests long ere the enterprise succeeds. 
Did not Christianity begin with a martyrdom ?" 

Thus the Christian church will again become the leader 
of modern ages : a post which it has lost since, by a senile 
attachment to the past, it has refused to go forwards with 
the future. The great movements of modern society are 
at this moment effected on the outside of the church. 
The church distrusts the age. If Christ is in advance of 
us all we cannot say the same of the churches that bear 
his name. His spirit they no longer have. They possess 
neither that tenderness which wept over Jerusalem, nor 
that manliness which brought down from heaven fire 
enough to burn for now nearly 2000 years. 

" The church that is to lead this century will not be a church 
creeping on all fours ; mewling and whining, its face turned down, 
its eyes turned back. It must be full of the brave, manly spirit of 
the day, keeping also the good of times past. There is a terrific 
energy in this age, for man was never so much developed, so much 
the master of himself before. Great truths, moral and political, have 
come to light. They fly quickly. The iron prophet of types pub- 
lishes his visions, of weal or woe, to the near and far. This marvel- 
lous age has invented steam, and the magnetic telegraph, apt symbols 
of itself, before which the miracles of fable are but an idle tale. It 
demands, as never before, freedom for itself, usefulness in its institu- 
tions, truth in its teachings, and beauty in its deeds. Let a church 
have that freedom, that usefulness, truth, and beauty, and the energy 
of this age will soon be on its side. But the church which did for 
the 5th century, or the 15th, will not do for this. What is well 
enough at Eome, Oxford, or Berlin, is not well enough for Boston. 
It must have our ideas, the smell of our ground, and have grown out 
of the religion in our soul. The freedom of America must be there 
before this energy will come; the wisdom of the 19th century, before 
its science will be on the churches' side, else that science will go over 
to the 1 infidels.' 

". Let us have a church that dares imitate the heroism of Jesus ; 



THE TRUE IDEA OF A CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 181 

seek inspiration as he sought it ; judge the past as he : act on the 
present like him ; pray as he prayed ; work as he wrought ; live as 
he lived. Let our doctrines and our forms fit the soul, as the limbs 
fit the body, growing out of it, growing with it. Let us have a 
church for the whole man ; truth for the mind : good works for the 
hands ; love for the heart ; and for the soul, that aspiring after per- 
fection, that unfaltering faith in God, which, like lightning in the 
clouds, shines brightest when elsewhere it is most dark. Let our 
church fit man, as the heavens fit the earth ! " 

In other terms, a parallel religious progress ought to 
correspond to the scientific, commercial, and industrial 
transformation of our age. Either the church will find 
a way to transform itself in this manner, or it will lose all 
influence. 

"In the middle ages, men had erroneous conceptions of religion, 
no doubt ; yet the church led the world. When she wrestled with 
the state, the state came undermost to the ground. See the result* of 
that supremacy — all over Europe there arose the cloister, halls of 
learning for the chosen few, minster, dome, cathedral, miracles of 
art, each costing the wealth of a province. Such was the embodiment 
of their ideas of religion, the prayers of a pious age done in stone, a 
psalm petrified as it rose from the world's mouth : a poor sacrifice, 
no doubt, but the best they knew how to offer. Now if men were to 
engage in religion as in politics, commerce, arts ; if the absolute re- 
ligion, the Christianity of Christ, were applied to life with all the 
might of this age, as the Christianity of the church was then applied, 
what a result should we not behold ! AVe should build up a great 
state with unity in the nation, and freedom in the people ; a state 
where there was honourable work for every hand, bread for ail 
mouths, clothing for all backs, culture for every mind, and love and 
faith in every heart. Truth would be our sermon, drawn from the 
oldest of Scriptures, God's writing there in nature, here in man ; 
works of daily duty would be our sacrament ; prophets inspired of 
God would minister the word, and piety send up her psalm of prayer, 
sweet in its notes, and joyfully prolonged. The noblest monument 
to Christ, the fairest trophy of religion, is a noble people, where ail 
are well fed and clad, industrious, free, educated, manly, pious, wise, 
and good." * 



* M Collected Yrorks," vol. iii. 



182 



IV. 

THE AGED. 

A SEKMON OF OLD AGE. 

" As the clear light is upon the holy candlestick • so is the "beauty of the 
face in ripe age." — Ecclesiasticus xxvi. 17. 

" I have often been asked to preach a sermon of Old Age ; and 
hitherto have declined, on the ground that I could not speak exactly 
from internal experience, but only from outward observation ; and I 
hope to be able at some future time to speak on the theme ; certainly, 
if I live, I may correct this present infirmity. To-day, I will try, — 
only asking all old persons to forgive the imperfections of this dis- 
course ; for they know what I only see. But as I was born into the 
arms of a father then one-and-fifty years old, who lived to add yet 
another quarter of a century thereunto ; and as my cradle was rocked 
by a grandmother who had more than fourscore years at my birth, 
and nearly a hundred when she ceased to be mortal ; and as my first 
' Christian ministry ' was attending upon old age, — I think I know 
something about the character of men and women whom time makes 
venerable. 

" There is a period when the apple-tree blossoms with its fellows 
of the wood and field. How fair a time it is ! All nature is woe- 
some and winning ; the material world celebrates its vegetable loves ; 
and the flower-bells, touched by the winds of Spring, usher in the 
universal marriage of Nature. Beast, bird, insect, reptile, fish, plant, 
lichen, with their prophetic colours spread, all float forward on the 
tide of new life. Then comes the Summer. Many a blossom falls 
fruitless to the ground, littering the earth with beauty, never to be 
used. Thick leaves hide the process of creation, which first blushed 
public in the flowers, and now unseen goes on. For so life's most 
deep and fruitful hours are hid in mystery. Apples are growing on 
every tree ; all Summer long they grow, and in early Autumn. At 
length the fruit is fully formed ; the leaves begin to fall, letting the 
sun approach more near. The apple hangs there yet ; not to grow, 



THE AGED. 183 

only to ripen. Weeks long it clings to the tree ; it gains nothing in 
size and weight. Externally, there is increase of beauty. Having 
finished the form from within, Xature brings out the added grace of 
colour. It is not a tricksy fashion painted on ; but an expression 
which of itself comes out ; — a fragrance and a loveliness of the apple's 
innermost. Within, at the same time, the component elements are 
changing. The apple grows mild and pleasant. It softens, sweetens ; 
in one word, it mellows. Some night, the vital forces of the tree get 
drowsy, and the Autumn, with gentle breath, just shakes the bough ; 
the expectant fruit lets go its hold, full-grown, full-ripe, full-coloured 
too, and with plump and happy sound the apple falls into the Au- 
tumn's lap ; and the Spring's marriage promise is complete. 

" Such is the natural process which each fruit goes through, 
blooming, growing, ripening. 

" The same divine law is appropriate for every kind of animal, 
from the lowest reptile up to imperial man. It is very beautiful. 
The parts of the process are perfect ; the whole is complete. Birth 
is human blossom ; youth, manhood, they are our summer growth ; 
old age is ripeness. The hands let go the mortal bough ; that is 
natural death. It is a dear, good God who orders all for the apple- 
tree, and for mankind. Yea, his ark shelters the spider and the 
toad, the wolf, and the lizard, and the snake ; — for He is Father and 
Mother to all the world." 

Then follows a description of the physical facts, tastes, 
inclinations, and habits which characterize old age. In 
particular it loves to revert both in theology and litera- 
ture to that which charmed its youth. Like maturity 
and youth, it has its own dangers and faults. It runs the 
risk of being querulous, fretful, given to routine, retro- 
grade. Those faults are not necessarily inherent in ad- 
vanced life. " It has been my fortune to know men and 
women who in their old age had a long Indian summer, 
in which the grass grew fresh again, and the landscape 
had a richness, a mellowness of outline and of tint ; yea ! 
and a beauty, too, which it had lacked in earlier years." 

All depends on the fidelity with which care has been 
taken of what is best in our nature. Morally the old 
man is stronger than the young one. He is more mild, 
more religious, he expects less from this world and more 
from the next. Such, at least, is the old man who has used 



181 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



life wisely. But alas for the man who has belied the 
promises of his spring ! Is anything more melancholy 
than the age of an old sensualist, of an old miser, of an 
old place-hunter, of an old coquette ? After drawing 
vigorous portraits of these deplorable moral ruins, the 
preacher passes on to characters which have crowned a 
devoted Christian life with a serene beauty of age. 

" Miss Kindly is aunt to everybody, and has been so long that 
none remember to the contrary. The little children love her; she 
helped their grandmothers to bridal ornaments, threescore years ago. 
Nay, this boy's grandfather found the way to college lay through her 
pocket. Generations not her own rise up and call her blessed. To 
this man's father her patient toil gave the first start in life. That 
great fortune — when it was a seed, she carried it in her hand. That 
wide river of reputation ran out of the cup her bounty filled. Now 
she is old ; very old : that little children, who cling about her, with 
open mouth, and great round eyes, wonder that anybody should ever 
be so old ; or that Aunt Kindly ever had a mother to kiss her mouth. 
To them she is coeval with the sun, and like that, an institution of 
the country. At Christmas, they think she is the wife of Saint 
Nicholas* himself, such an advent is there of blessings from her 
hand. She has helped lay a Messiah in many a poor man's crib. 

" Her hands are thin ; her voice feeble y her back is bent ; she 
walks with a staff — the best limb of the three. She wears a cap of 
antique pattern, yet of her own nice make. She has great round 
spectacles, and holds her book away off the other side of the candle 
when she reads. For more than sixty years she has been a special 
providence to the family. How she used to go forth — the very 
charity of God — to soothe, and heal, and bless ! How industrious are 
her hands ! how thoughtful and witty that fertile mind ! Her heart 
has gathered power to love in all the eighty-six years of her toilsome 
life. When the birth-angel came to a related house, she was there 
to be the mother's mother ; ay, mother also to the new-bora baby's 
soul. And when the wings of death flapped in the street, and shook 
a neighbour's door, she smoothed down the pillow for the fainting 
head ; she soothed and cheered the spirit of the waiting man, open- 
ing the curtains of heaven that he might look through and see the 
welcoming face of the dear Infinite Mother : nay, she put the wings 
of her own strong, experienced piety under him, and sought to bear 
him up. 

*. St Nicholas is in the North the distributor of presents to deserving 
children. 



OLD AC-E. 



185 



" Xow these things are passed by. Xo. they are not passed by, 
thev are recollected in the memory of the dear God. and every good 
deed she has done is treasured in her own heart. The bulb shuts up 
the summer in its breast which in winter will come out a fragrant 
hyacinth. Stratum after stratum, her good works are laid up, im- 
perishable, in the geology of her character. 

" It is near noon now. She is alone. She has been thoughtful 
all day. talking inwardly to herself. The family notice it. and say 
nothing. In her chamber, from a private drawer, she takes a little 
casket ; and from thence a book, gilt-edged and clasped ; but the 
clasp is worn, the gilding is old, the binding faded by long use. Her 
hands tremble as she opens it. First she reads her own name on the 
fly leaf; only her Christian name. 'Agnes.' and the date. Sixty-eight 
years ago this day it was written there, in a clear, youthful, clerkly 
hand — with a little tremble in it. as if the heart beat over-quick. It 
is very well worn, the dear old Bible. It opens of its own accord at 
the lith chapter of St John. There is a little folded piece of paper 
there : it touches the 1st verse and 27th. She sees neither : she reads 
both out of her soul : — 1 Let not your heart be troubled ; ye believe 
in God ; believe also in me : ' i Peace I leave with you. My peace 
give I unto you. Not as the world giveth, give I unto you.' She 
opens the paper. There is a little brown dust in it : perhaps the 
remnant of a flower. She takes the precious relic in her hand, made 
cold by emotion. She drops a tear on it and the dust is transfigured 
before her e}es : it is a red rose of the spring, not quite half blown, 
dewy fresh. She is old no louger. It is not Aunt Kindly now ; it 
is sweet Agnes, as the maiden of 18 was, eight-and-sixty years ago, 
one day in May, when all nature was woosome and winning, and 
every flower-bell rung in the marriage of the year. Her lover had 
just put that red rose of the spring into her hand, and the good God 
another in her cheek, not quite half-blown, dewy fresh. The young 
man's arm is round her ; her brown curls fall on his shoulder; she 
feels his breath on her face, his cheek on hers : their lips join, and 
like two morning dew-drops in that rose, their two loves rush into 
one. But the youth must wander to a far land. They will think of 
each other as they look at the North Star. She bids' him take her 
Bible. He saw the Xorth Star hang over the turrets of many a 
foreign town. His soul went to God — there is as straight a road 
from India as from any other spot — and his Bible came back to her 
— the Divine love in it. without the human lover, the leaf turned 
down at the blessed words of St John, 1st and 27th of the Uth chapter. 
She put the rose there to note the spot : what marks the thought 
holds now the symbol of their youthful love. To-day her soul is with 
him, her maiden soul with his angel soul ; and one day the two. like 
two dew-drops, will rush into one immortal wedlock, and the old age 
of earth shall become eternal youth in the Kingdom of Heaven. 



186 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



" Grandfather is old. His back also is bent. In the street he 
sees crowds of men looking dreadfully young, and walking fearfully 
swift. He wonders where all the old folks are. Once, when a boy, 
he could not find people young enough for him, and sidled up to any 
young stranger he met on Sundays, wondering why God made the 
world so old. Now he goes to Commencement to see his grandsons 
take their degree, and is astonished at the youth of the audience. 
' This is new,' he says; 'it did not use to be so fifty years before.' 
At meeting, the minister seems surprisingly young, the audience 
young ; and he looks round and is astonished that there are so few 
venerable heads. The audience seems not decorous ; they come in 
late, and hurry off early, clapping the doors to after them with ir- 
reverent bang. But Grandfather is decorous, well-mannered, early 
in his seat ; jostled, he jostles not again ; elbowed, he returns it not ; 
crowded, he thinks no evil. H^- is gentlemanly to the rude, obliging 
to the insolent and vulgar; — for Grandfather is a gentleman, not 
puffed up with mere money, but edified with well -grown manliness. 
Time has dignified his good-manners. 

" Now it is night. Grandfather sits by his old-fashioned fire. 
The family are all a-bed. He draws his old-fashioned chair nearer 
to the hearth. On the stand which his mother gave him are the 
candlesticks, also of old time. The candles are three-quarters burnt 
down ; the fire on the hearth also is low. He has been thoughtful 
all day, talking half to himself, chanting a bit of verse, humming a 
snatch of an old tune. He kissed more tenderly than common his 
youngest grand-daughter, — the family pet, — before she went to bed. 
He takes out of his bosom a little locket ; nobody ever sees it. There- 
in are two little twists of hair ; common hair : it might be yours or 
mine. But as Grandfather looks at them, the outer twist of hair be- 
comes a whole head of most ambrosial curls. He remembers the 
stolen interviews, the meetings by moonlight, and how sweet the 
evening star looked, and how he laid his hand on another's shoulder : 
' You are my evening star,' quoth he. He remembers 

' The fountain-heads, and pathless groves, 
Places that pale Passion loves.' 

" He thinks of his bridal hour. 

" In the stillness of the great slumbering town, while life breaks 
only in a quiet ripple on all those hundred thousand lips, he hears no 
noise ; but with wintry hands solemnly the church clock strikes the 
midnight hour. In his locket he looks again. This other twist is 
the hair of his firstborn son. At this same hour of midnight, once, 
■ — it is now many j T ears ago — when the long agony was over he 
knelt and pra) 7 ed — ' My God, I thank thee that I, though father, am 
still a husband too ! Oh, what have I done ! what am I, that unto 
me thus a life should be given, and another spared ! ' Now he has 



OLD AGE. 



1S7 



children, and children's children — the joy of his old age. But for 
many a year his wife has looked to him from beyond the Evening 
>:ar : yea. still she is herself the Evening Star, yet more beautiful ; a 
star that never sets ; not mortal wife now. but angel ; and he says, 
* How long. 0 Lord ? when lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, 
that mine eyes may see thy salvation ? ' 

u The last stick on his andirons snaps asunder, and falls outward. 
Two faintly smoking brands stand there. Grandfather lays them to- 
gether, and they flame up ; the two smokes are one united flame, 
4 Even so let it be in heaven,' says Grandfather. 

" Dr Priestly, when he was young, preached that old age was the 
happiest time of life : and when he was himself 80 he wrote, 1 1 have 
found it so.' But the old age of the glutton, the fop, the miser, the 
hunter after place, the bigot, the shrew, what would that be 1 Think 
of the old age of a Boston Kidnapper ! It is only a noble, manly 
life, full of piety, which makes old age beautiful. Then we ripen for 
Eternity, and the dear God looks down from heaven, and lays his 
hand on the venerable head : Come, thou beloved, inherit the 
Kingdom prepared for thee.' " * 



Collected "Works," vol. iii. 



188 



V. 

THE DUTY OF OBEYING THE LAW TOUCHING FUGITIVE 
SLAVES. 

The following extract is taken from a sermon entitled 
" The State of the Nation," preached in Boston the 28th 
of November, 1850, on the text, Righteousness exalteth a 
nation, but sin is a reproach to any people (Prov. xiv. 34). 
The argument of those who like Daniel Webster hold that 
the North ought to submit to the Fugitive Slave Law, 
comes at last to this, viz., that after all it is the law ; that 
the safety of the Union depended on its acceptance ; that 
if it was hard to the Northerners to observe the law, there 
was no merit in performing agreeable duties, and that it 
would be a noble thing " to overcome their prejudices," 
and thus to uphold the laws and the Union by earnestly 
fulfilling their constitutional obligations. " The law of 
God," said Webster, " never commands us to disobey the 
law of man." In reply to this, Parker cites from the 
Bible several instances in which conscience and the law 
of the land were in formal conflict. He asks ironically if 
it was a duty for Daniel to obey King Darius by whom 
he was forbidden to worship God; for the apostles to 
cease from proclaiming the Gospel out of deference to the 
prohibition of the Sanhedrim ; for the parents of Moses 
to cast their infant into the Nile agreeably to Pharaoh's 
decree. 

" However there is another ancient case, mentioned in the Bible, 
in which the laws commanded one thing, and conscience just the op- 



DUTY OF OBEYING THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW". 189 



posite. Here is the record of the law : — ' Now both the chief priests 
and the Pharisees had given a commandment, that if any one knew 
where he [Jesus] were, he should show it, that they might take him.' 
Of course, it became the official and legal business of each disciple 
who knew where Christ was, to make it known to the authorities. 
No doubt James and John could leave all and follow him. with 
others of the people who knew not the law of Moses, and were ac- 
cursed ; nay, the women, Martha and Mary, could minister unto him 
of their substance, could wash his feet with tears, and wipe them 
with the hairs of their head. They did it gladly, of their own free 
will, and took pleasure therein, I make no doubt. There was no 
merit in that — ; Any man can perform an agreeable duty.' But 
there was found one disciple who could ' perform a disagreeable 
duty.' He went, perhaps ' with alacrity,' and betrayed his Saviour 
to the marshal of the district of Jerusalem, who was called a cen- 
turion. Had he no affection for Jesus ? No doubt ; but he could 
conquer his prejudices, while Mary and John could not. 

" Judas Iscariot has rather a bad name in the Christian world : 
he is called 'the son of perdition,' in the New Testament, and his 
conduct is reckoned a ' transgression ; ' nay, it is said the devil 
' entered into him,' to cause this hideous sin. But all this it seems 
was a mistake ; certainly, if we are to believe our ' republican ' law- 
yers and statesmen, Iscariot only fulfilled his 1 constitutional obliga- 
tions.' It was only ; on that point,' of betraying his Saviour, that 
the constitutional law required him to have anything to do with 
Jesus. He took his i thirty pieces of silver' — about fifteen dollars ; 
a Yankee is to do it for ten, having fewer prejudices to conquer — it 
was his legal fee, for value received. True, the Christians thought it 
was 1 the wages of iniquity,' and even the Pharisees — who commonly 
made the commandment of God of none effect by their traditions — 
dared not defile the temple with this ; price of blood ; ' but it was 
honest money. It was as honest a fee as any American commissioner 
or deputy will ever get for a similar service. How mistaken we are ! 
Judas Iscariot is not a traitor ; he was a great patriot ; he con- 
quered his 1 prejudices,' performed ' a disagreeable duty ' as an office of 
4 high morals and high principle ; ' he kept the 1 law ' and the ' Con- 
stitution,' and did all he could to ' save the Union ; 1 nay, he was. a 
saint, ; not a whit behind the very chiefest apostles.' ' The law of 
God never commands us to disobey the law of man.' Sancte Isca- 
riot e, or a pro nobis.''' * 



* " Collected Works," vol. iv. p. 251. 



190 



VI. 

THE CHIEF SINS OF THE PEOPLE. 

This is the title which Theodore Parker gave to a 
sermon delivered on the 10th of April, 1851, the day ap- 
pointed, according to an old custom, for the annual fast, 
•by the authorities of Massachusetts. Parker availed 
himself of the opportunity to deliver a vigorous discourse 
in which he stigmatized the public vices which dis- 
honoured the Union, especially those which were con- 
trary to the fundamental idea of the American Consti- 
tution. After showing the excellent fruits which fidelity 
thereto had borne, he proceeds to the contradiction it has 
undergone in practice and in the national policy. The 
liberal conscience of America suffers eclipse, the primary 
cause of which is thirst for money. In consequence, a 
new aristocracy is formed, sustained by a veritable super- 
stition for " the almighty dollar," and the authorities of 
the country shut their eyes to a crowd of illegalities, 
because they bring money, while infamous and truly 
criminal laws are passed because such enactments will 
prevent the loss of gain or serve for its augmentation. 
If a proof is required, take the execrable Fugitive Slave 
Law, which transmutes the magistrates of the Union into 
devastators of that individual freedom which their duty 
required them to shield, a law which too makes it the 
duty of every free man in the United States to lend a 
hand toward the perpetration of that murder which is 
called the enslavement of another man. It is impossible 



THE CHIEF SINS OF THE PEOPLE, 



191 



to conceive the demoralization ^hicli this law, shame- 
lessly proposed, passed, and applied, inflicts on the whole 
nation, whose conscience is odiously wounded, but who 
knows not how to get out of the difficulty in which it has 
allowed itself to be involved. However, duty is appealed 
to, law demands obedience in the court of conscience, and 
must have its claim allowed. Yet religious and political 
history is full of examples which demonstrate that we 
must obey God rather than man. The city of Boston 
suffers under a painful impression caused by the capture 
and extradition of Thomas Sims. Here is seen how they 
were duped who were led to think that the Fugitive Slave 
Law would bring concord and peace into the Union. 
Since the mournful days which preceded the triumph of 
American freedom Boston never knew hours so wretched : 
— its .streets occupied by armed forces, chains hung 
around the court-house, the menacing explosion of the 
popular indignation, a disgraced magistracy, forced to 
condemn an innocent man to what is worse than death 
— never was the like seen, never could the like have been 
thought possible. Such is the actual and visible result of 
that accursed passion for money which makes the Union 
forget itself and stand dishonoured before the eyes of God 
and man. "We subjoin the termination of this powerful 
discourse. 

" Shall I ask you to despair of human liberty and rights ? I 
believe that money is to triumph for the present. We see it does in 
Boston, Philadelphia, Xew York, and Washington : see this in the 
defence of bribery ; in the chains of the court-house ; in the judges' 
pliant necks ; in the swords of the police to-day ; see it in the threats 
of the press to withdraw the trade of Boston from towns that favour 
the unalienable rights of man ! 

l ' Will the Union hold out ? I know not that. But. if men 
continue to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law, I do not know how soon 
it will end ; I do not care how soon the Union goes to pieces. I 
believe in justice and the law of God ; that ultimately the right will 
prevail. Wrong will prevail for a time, and attract admiration. I 



192 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



have seen in a haberdasher's shop-window the figure of a wooden 
woman showily arrayed, turning round on a pivot, and attracting the 
gaze of all the passers-by ; but ere long it is forgotten. So it will be 
with this transient love of Slavery in Boston ; but the love of right 
will last as long as the granite in New Hampshire hills. I will not 
tell you to despair of freedom because politicians are false ; they are 
often so. Despair of freedom for the black man ! No, never. Not 
till heaven shakes down its stars ; nay, not till the heart of man 
ceases to yearn for liberty ; not till the eternal God is hurled from 
His throne, and a devil takes His place ! All the arts of wicked 
men shall not prevail against the Father ! nay, at last, not against 
the Son. 

" The very scenes we have witnessed here, — the court-house in 
chains, — the laws of Massachusetts despised, — the commonwealth 
disgraced, — these speak to the people with an eloquence beyond all 
power of human speech. Here is great argument for our cause. 
This work begets new foes to every form of wrong. There is a day 
after to-day, — an eternity after to-morrow. Let us be courageous 
and active, but cool and tranquil, and full of hope. 

" These are the beginning of sorrows ; we shall have others, and 
trials. Continued material prosperity is commonly bad for a man, 
always for a nation. I think the time is coming when there will be 
a terrible contest between Liberty and Slavery. Now is the time to 
spread ideas, not to bear arms. I know which will triumph : the 
present love of thraldom is only an eddy in the great river of the 
nation's life; by and by it will pass down the stream and be forgot. 
Liberty will spread with us, as the spring over the New England 
hills. One spot will blossom, and then another, until at last the 
spring has covered the whole land, and every mountain rejoices in its 
verdant splendour. 

" 0 Boston ! thou wert once the prayer and pride of all New 
England men, and holy hands were laid in baptism on thy baby 
brow ! Thou art dishonoured now ; thou hast taken to thy arms the 
enemies of men. Thou hast betrayed the slave ; thy brother's blood 
cries out against thee from the ground. Thou art a stealer of man- 
kind. In thy borders, for long years, the cradle of liberty has been 
placed. The golden serpent of commerce has twined its snaky folds 
about it all, and fascinated into sleep the child. Tread lightly, 
soldiers : he yet may wake. Yes, in his time this child shall wake, 
and Boston shall scourge out the memory of the men who have 
trodden her laws under foot, violated the dearest instincts of her 
heart, and profaned her religion. I appeal from Boston, swollen 
with wealth, drunk with passion, and mad against freedom — to Bos- 
ton in her calm and sober hour. 

" O Massachusetts, noble State ! the mother that bore us all ; 
parent of goodly institutions and of noble men, whose great ideas 



THE CHIEF SINS OF THE PEOPLE. 



193 



have blessed the land! — how art thou defiled, dishonoured, and 
brought low ! One of thine own hired servants has wrought this 
deed of shame, and rent the bosom which took him as an adopted 
son. Shall it be always thus ? I conjure thee by all thy battle- 
fields. — by the remembrance of the great men born of thee, who 
battled for the right, thy Franklin, Hancock, the Adamses — three in 
a single name. — by thine ideas and thy love of God, — to forbid for 
ever all such deeds as this, and wipe away thy deep disgrace. 

11 America, thou youngest born of all God's family of States ! thou 
art a giant in thy youth, laying thine either hand upon thine either 
sea ; the lakes behind thee, and the Mexique bay before. Hast thou 
too forgot thy mission here, proud only of thy wide-spread soil, thy 
cattle, corn, thy cotton, and thy cloth ? Wilt thou welcome the 
Hungarian hero, and yet hold slaves, and hunt poor negroes through 
thy land ? Thou art the ally of the despot, thyself out-heathening 
the heathen Turk. Yea. every Christian king may taunt thee with 
thy slaves. Dost thou forget thine own great men, — thy Washing- 
ton, thy Jefferson ? forget thine own proud words prayed forth to 
God in thy great act of prayer ? Is it to protect thy wealth alone 
that thou hast formed a State ? and shall thy wealth be slaves ? Xo, 
thou art mad. It shall not be. One day thou wilt heed the lessons 
of the past, practise thy prayer, wilt turn to God, and rend out of 
thy book the hated page where Slavery is writ. Thy sons who led 
thee astray in thy madness, where shall they appear ? 

u And thou our God, the Father of us all, Father and Mother too, 
Parent of freemen, Parent also of the slave, look down upon us in 
our sad estate. Look down upon thy saints, and bless them ; yea, 
bless thy sinners too ; save from the wicked heart. Bless this town 
by Thy chastisement ; this State by Thine afflictions ; this nation by 
Thy rod. Teach us to resist evil, and with good, till we break the 
fetters from every foot, the chains from every hand, and let the 
oppressed go free. So let Thy kiDgdom come; so may Thy will be 
done on earth as it is in heaven." * 



* " Collected Works,'' vol. vii. pp. 292—295. 



13 



194 



VII. 

A LESSON FOB THE DAY. 

This discourse took the place of the Lesson from the 
Scripture on Sunday, the 29th of May, 1854, when all 
Boston was labouring under the excitement caused, by the 
recent apprehension of Anthony Burns, a fugitive slave, 
and by the sanguinary scenes which ensued. 

"I see by your faces, as well as by your number, what is ex- 
pected of me to-day. A person has just sent me a request, asking 
me, c Cannot you extemporize a sermon for this day ? ' It is easier 
to do it than not. But I shall not extemporize a sermon for to-day 
— I shall extemporize the Scripture. I therefore paes over the Bible 
words, which I designed to read from the Old Testament and the 
New, and will take the Morning Lesson from the circumstances of 
the past week. The time has not come for me to preach a sermon 
on the great wrong now enacting in this city. The deed is not yet 
fully done ! any counsel that I have to offer is better given elsewhere 
than here, at another time than now. Neither you nor I are quite 
calm enough to-day to look the matter fairly in the face and see 
entirely what it means. Before the events of the past week took 
place, I had proposed to preach this morning on the subject of war, 
taking my theme from the present commotions in Europe, which also 
will reach us. and have already. That will presently be the theme of 
my morning's sermon. Next Sunday I shall preach on The perils 
into which America is brought at this day by the new Crime 
against Humanity. That is the theme for next Sunday ! the other 
is for to-day. But before I proceed to that, I have some words to say 
in place of the Scripture lesson, and instead of a selection from the 
Old Testament prophets. 

(> Since last we came together, there has been a man stolen in this 
city of our fathers. It is not the first; it may not be the last. He 
is now in the great slave pen in the city of Boston. He is there 
against the law of the Commonwealth, which, if I am rightly in- 



A LESSON FOR THE DAY. 



195 



formed, in such cases prohibits the use of State edifices as United 
States gaols. I may be mistaken. Any forcible attempt to take him 
from that barracoon of Boston would be wholly without use. For 
besides the holiday soldiers who belong to the city of Boston, and are 
ready to shoot down their brothers in a just or an unjust cause, any 
day when the city government gives them its command and its liquor, 
I understand that there are 184 United States marines lodged in the 
Court House, every man of them furnished with a musket and a 
bayonet, with his side arms, and 24 ball cartridges. They are sta- 
tioned also in a very strong building, and where five men, in a pass- 
age-way, about the width of this pulpit, can defend it against five- 
and-twenty, or a hundred. To £ keep the peace,' the Mayor, who 
the other day ' regretted the arrest ' of our brother, Anthony Burns, 
and declared that his sympathies were wholly with the alleged fugi- 
tive — and of course wholly against the claimant and the Marshal — in 
order to keep the peace of the city, the Mayor must become corporal 
of the guard for kidnappers from Virginia. He must keep the peace 
of our city, and defend these guests of Boston over the graves, the 
unmonumented graves, of John Hancock and Samuel Adams. 

" A man has been killed by violence. Some say he was killed by 
his own coadjutors: I can easily believe it ; there is evidence enough 
that they were greatly frightened. They were not United States 
soldiers, but volunteers from the streets of Boston, who, for their pay, 
went into the Court House to assist in kidnapping a brother man. 
They were so cowardly that they could not use the simple cutlasses 
they had in their hands, but smote right and left, like ignorant and 
frightened ruffians as they are. They may have slain their brother 
or not — I cannot tell. It is said by some that they killed him. 
Another story is, that he was killed by a hostile hand from without. 
Some say by a bullet, some by an axe, and others still by a knife. 
As yet nobody knows the facts. But a man has been killed. He 
was a volunteer in this service. He liked the business of enslaving a 
man, and has gone to render an account to God for his gratuitous 
wickedness. Twelve men have been arrested, and are now in gaol to 
await their examination for wilful murder ! 

" Here, then, is one man butchered, and twelve men brought in 
peril of their lives. Why is this ? Whose fault is it ? 

" Some eight years ago, a Boston merchant, by his mercenaries, 
kidnapped a man ' between Faneuil Hall and old Quincy,' and carried 
him off to eternal slavery. Boston mechanics, the next day, held up 
the half-eagles which they received as pay for stealing a man. The 
matter was brought before the grand jury for the county of Suffolk, 
and abundant evidence was presented, as I understand, but they 
found 'no bill.' A wealthy merchant, in the name of trade, had 
stolen a black man, who, on board a ship, had come to this city, had 
been seized by the mercenaries of this merchant, kept by them for 

13 * 



196 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



awhile, and then, when he escaped, kidnapped a second time in the 
city of Boston. Boston did not punish the deed ! 

" The Fugitive Slave Bill was presented to us, and Boston rose 
up to welcome it ! The greatest man in all the North came here, 
and in this city told Massachusetts she must obey the Fugitive Slave 
Bill with alacrity — that we must all conquer our prejudices in favour 
of justice and the unalienable rights of man. Boston did conquer 
her prejudices in favour of justice and the unalienable rights of 
man. 

" Do you not remember the 1 Union Meeting ' which was held in 
Faneuil Hall, when a ' political soldier of fortune,' sometimes called 
the ' Democratic Prince of the Devils,' howled at the idea that there 
was a law of God higher than the Fugitive Slave Bill ? He sneered, 
and asked, 'Will you have the " Higher Law of God " to rule over 
you ? ' and the multitude which occupied the floor, and the multi- 
tude that crowded the galleries, howled down the Higher Law of 
God ! They treated the Higher Law to a laugh and a howl ! That 
was Tuesday night. It was the Tuesday before Thanksgiving-day. 
On that Thanksgiving-day, I told the congregation that the men who 
howled down the Higher Law of Almighty God, had got Almighty 
God to settle with ; that they had sown the wind, and would reap 
the whirlwind. At that meeting Mr Choate told the people — ' RE- 
MEMBER ! Remember ! Remember ! ' Then nobody knew what to 
' remember.' Now you know. That is the state of that case. 

" Then you 'remember ' the kidnappers came here to seize Thomas 
Sims. Thomas Sims was seized. Nine days he was on trial for 
more than his life ; and never saw a judge — never saw a jury. He 
was sent back into bondage from the city of Boston. You remember 
the chains that were put around the Court House ; you remember 
the judges of Massachusetts stooping, crouching, creeping, crawling 
under the chain of Slavery, in order to get in their own courts. All 
these things you ' remember.' Boston was non-resistant. She gave 
her 1 back to the smiters ' — from the South ; she ' withheld not her 
cheek ' — from the scorn of South Carolina, and welcomed the ' spit- 
ting ' of kidnappers from Georgia and Virginia. To-day we have our 
pay for such conduct. You have not forgotten the ' 1500 gentlemen 
of property and standing,' who volunteered to conduct Mr Sims to 
slavery — Marshal Sukey's 'gentlemen.' They ' remember ' it. They 
are sorry enough now. Let us forgive — we need not forget. ' RE- 
MEMBER ! Remember! Remember /' 

" The Nebraska Bill has just now been passed. Who passed it ? 
The ' 1500 gentlemen of property and standing' in Boston, who, in 
1851, volunteered to carry Thomas Sims into slavery by force of 
arms. They passed the Nebraska Bill. If Boston had punished the 
kidnapping of 1845, there would have been no Fugitive Slave Bill in 
1850. If Massachusetts, in 1850, had declared the Bill should not 



A LESSON FOR THE DAY. 



197 



be executed, the kidnapper would never have shown his face in the 
streets of Boston. If. failing in this. Boston had said, in 1851. 
1 Thomas Sims shall Dot be carried off.' and forcibly or peacefully, by 
the majesty of the great mass of men, had resisted it, no kidnapper 
would have come here again. There would have been no Nebraska 
Bill. But to every demand of the slave power. Massachusetts has 
said. ; Yes. yes ! — we grant it all ! ' 1 Agitation must cease ! ' ' Save 
the Union ! 1 

" Southern Slavery is an institution which is in earnest. Northern 
Freedom is an institution that is not in earnest. It was in earnest 
in 76 and '83. It has not been much in earnest since. The com- 
promises are but provisional ! Slavery is the only finality ! Now, 
since the Nebraska Bill is passed, an attempt is made to add insult to 
insult, injury to injury. Last week, at New York, a brother of the 
Bev. Dr Pennington, an established clergyman, of large reputation, 
great character, acknowledged learning, who has his diploma from 
the University of Heidelberg, in Germany — a more honourable 
source than that from which any clergyman in Massachusetts has 
received one — his brother and two nephews were kidnapped in New 
York, and without any trial, without any defence, were hurried off 
into bondage. Then, at Boston, you know what was done in the last 
four days. Behold the consequences of the doctrine that there is no 
higher Jaw, Look at Boston to-day. There are no chains round 
your Court House — there are only ropes round it this time. A 
hundred and eighty-four United States soldiers are there. They are, 
I am told, mostly foreigners — the scum of the earth — none but such 
enter into armies as common soldiers, in a country like ours. I say 
it with pity — they are not to blame for having been born where they 
were and what they are. I pity the scum as well as I pity the mass 
of men. The soldiers are there, I say, and their trade is to kill. 
Why is this so ? 

" Y'ou remember the meeting at Faneuil Hall last Friday, when 
even the words of my friend, Wendell Phillips, the most eloquent 
words that get spoken in America in this century, hardly restrained 
the multitude from going, and by violence storming the Court House. 
What stirred them up ? It was the spirit of our fathers — the spirit 
of justice and liberty in your heart, and in my heart, and in the heart 
of us all. Sometimes it gets the better of a man's prudence, espe- 
cially on occasions like this ; and so excited was that assembly of 
four or five thousand men, that even the words of eloquent Wendell 
Phillips could hardly restrain them from going at once rashly to the 
Court House, and tearing it to the ground. 

<; Boston is the most peaceful of cities. Why ? Because we have 
commonly had a peace which was worth keeping, No city respects 
laws so much. Because the laws have been made by the people, for 
the people, and are laws which respect justice. Here is a law which 



198 



LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER. 



the people will not keep. It is a law of our Southern masters ; a 
law not fit to keep. 

" Why is Boston in this confusion to-day ? The Fugitive Slave 
Bill Commissioner has just now been sowing the wind, that we may 
reap the whirlwind. The old Fugitive Slave Bill Commissioner stands 
back; he has gone to look after his 'personal popularity.' But, 
w T hen Commissioner Curtis does not dare appear in this matter, 
another man comes forward, and for the first time seeks to kidnap 
his man also in the city of Boston. Judge Loring is a man whom I 
have respected and honoured. His private life is mainly blameless, 
so far as I know. He has been, I think, uniformly beloved. His 
character has entitled him to the esteem of his fellow-citizens. I 
have known him somewhat. I never heard a mean word from him 
— many good words. He was once the law-partner of Horace Mann, 
and learned humanity of a great teacher. I have respected him a 
good deal. He is a respectable man — in the Boston sense of that 
word, and in a much higher sense ; at least, I have thought so. He 
is a kind-hearted, charitable man ; a good neighbour ; a fast friend 
— when politics do not interfere ; charitable with his purse ; an ex- 
cellent husband ; a kind father ; a good relative. And I should as 
soon have expected that venerable man who sits before me, born be- 
fore your Kevolution [Samuel May], — I should as soon have ex- 
pected him to go and kidnap Bobert Morris, or any of the other 
coloured men I see around me, as I should have expected Judge 
Loring to do this thing. But he has sown the wind, and we are 
reaping the whirlwind. I need not say what I now think of him. 
He is to act to-morrow, and may yet act like a man. Let us wait 
and see. Perhaps there is manhood in him yet. But, my friends, 
all this confusion is his work. He knew he was stealing a man born 
with the same unalienable right to ' life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness ' as himself. He knew the slave-holders had no more right 
to Anthony Burns than to his own daughter. He knew the conse- 
quences of stealing a man. He knew that there are men in Boston 
who have not yet conquered their prejudices — men who respect the 
higher law of God. He knew there would be a meeting at Faneuil 
Hall — gatherings in the streets. He knew there would be violence. 

" Edward Greeley Loring, Judge of Probate for the county of 
Suffolk, in the State of Massachusetts, Fugitive Slave Bill Commis- 
sioner of the United States, before these citizens of Boston, on Ascen- 
sion Sunday, assembled to worship God, I charge you with the death 
of that man who was killed on last Friday night. He was your fel- 
low-servant in kidnapping. He dies at your hand. You fired the 
shot which makes his wife a widow, his child an orphan. I charge 
you with the peril of twelve men, arrested for murder, and on trial 
for their lives. I charge you with filling the Court House with 184 
hired ruffians of the United States, and alarming not only this city 



A LESSON FOE, THE DAY. 



199 



for lier liberties that are in peril, but stirring up the whole Com- 
monwealth of Massachusetts with indignation, which no man knows 
how to stop — which no man can stop. You have done it all ! 
" This is my Lesson for the Day." * 



* " Collected Works," vol. vi. pp, 44 — 50. 



200 



VIII. 

TRUTH IN CONFLICT WITH THE WORLD. 
A PARABLE. 

This piece is one of Parker's earliest productions, and 
portrays him exactly. It appeared in the Dial of Octo- 
ber, 1840. The parable was also a prediction. 

" One day Abdiel paid a visit to Paul, who had returned to Tarsus 
after his journey to Damascus. He found him seated and thoughtful 
on the threshold of his house : his tools and his favourite books lay 
negligently on the floor behind him. ' I hear strange things of thee,' 
said the Rabbi coldly ; ' thou art become a follower of the Nazarene. 
What course art thou about to pursue after this fine conversion ? ' 
( I shall go and preach the gospel to all nations,' quietly answered 
the new convert. ' I set out to-morrow.' 

" The Rabbi, who had a secret grudge against Paul, looked at 
him with affected incredulity and said : f Dost thou know the sacri- 
fice thou art making ? Thou must renounce father, mother, and 
friends, the society of the great and the wise. Thou wilt meet with 
severe trials and. serious dangers. Thou wilt be poor, branded with 
offensive names, persecuted, flogged, perhaps put to death.' 'None 
of those things move me,' replied he ; * I have weighed them all. I 
value not my life, compared with the observance of God's law and 
the proclamation of the truth, notwithstanding what men may do. 
I shall walk in God's light without fear. No longer am I a slave to 
the old law of sin and death. I am God's freedman, made free by 
the law of the Spirit of life which is in Jesus Christ.' ' Here,' inter- 
posed the Rabbi, 1 thou mayest acquire wealth and renown ; in thy 
new work thou wilt have only pain, infamy, and death.' 1 God's voice 
bids me go,' cried the apostle firmly, ' and I am ready to spend and 
be spent for the truth.' i Die then,' growled the Rabbi ; ' die, mad 
Nazarene, atheist, as thou art. He who gives himself to novelties, 
preferring silly convictions and the whims of conscience to solid 



TRUTH IN CONFLICT WITH THE "WORLD. 



201 



wealth and his friends' advice, deserves the gibbet. Die in thy folly. 
Henceforward I disown thee ; call me friend no longer.' Years 
passed away. The divine word grew and prevailed. One day a 
rumour spread over the public squares of Tarsus and soon passed from 
mouth to mouth : 

" ' Paul the apostle is a prisoner in Eome, and every day expects 
the order which will consign him to the lions. His approaching trial 
will be his last.' Then Abdiel said to the old women in the syna- 
gogues : ' I well knew it would come to this. How much more wisely 
would he have acted had he remained here in his trade and in the 
old paths of our fathers and the prophets, without losing his senses 
about whims of conscience ! He might have lived respectably in 
Tarsus till advanced age, he might have been father of sons and 
daughters, he might have been saluted as Rabbi in our streets.' 

" Such was the talk in Tarsus. At the same moment Paul sat in 
his prison at Rome, full of consolation. The Lord appeared to him 
in vision and said, 4 Paul, fear not ; thou hast fought the good 
fight. I am with thee to the end of the world.' The calm old man 
replied, ' I know whom I have served, and I am fully persuaded that 
God will keep what I have entrusted to him. I have not received 
the spirit of fear, but of love and of a sound mind. I shall finish my 
course with joy, for already I behold the crown of righteousness 
descending on my head ; and now my salvation is more perfect and 
my hope more ardent than when I first believed.' 

" And in his heart reverberated the same voice which of old spake 
on the mount of transfiguration, i Thou art my beloved son, in whom 
I am well pleased.' " 



THE END. 



JOHN CHILDS AND SON, PKINTERS. 



Persons who may wish to know more of Theodore Parker are referred to 
the following Standard Works. 

THE COLLECTED WORKS OF THEODORE PARKER, Minister 
of the Twenty-Eighth Congregational Society at Boston, U. S. Con- 
taining his Theological, Polemical, and Critical Writings, Sermons, 
Speeches, Addresses, and Literary Miscellanies. Edited by Frances 
Power Cobbe. In 12 Volumes, 8vo. 



Vol. I. Containing Discourse of Matters 
pertaining to Religion; with Preface by 
the Editor, and a Portrait of Parker from 
a Medallion by Saulini. pp. 384, cloth, 6s. 

Vol. II. Containing Ten Sermons, and 
Prayers, pp. 368, cloth, price 6s. 

Vol. III. Containing Discourses of The- 
ology, pp. 326, cloth, price 6s. 

Vol. IV. Containing Discourses of Poli- 
tics, pp. 320, cloth, price 6s. 

Vol. V. Containing Discourses of Slave- 
ry, Vol. I. pp. 336, cloth, price 6s. 

Vol. VI. Containing Discourses of Slave- 
ry, Vol. II. pp. 330, cloth, price 6s. 



Vol. VII. Containing Discourses of So- 
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Vol. VIII. Containing Miscellaneous Dis- 
courses, pp. 226, cloth, price 6s. 

Vol. IX. Containing Critical Writings, 
Vol. I. pp. 298, cloth, price 6s. 

Vol. X. Containing Critical Writings, 
Vol. II. pp. 316, cloth, price 6s. 

Vol. XL Containing Sermons on The- 
ism, Atheism, and the Popular Theology, 
pp. 1., 257, cloth, price 6s. 

Vol. XII. Containing Autobiographical 
and Miscellaneous Pieces, pp. 356, cloth, 
price 6s. 



LESSONS FROM THE WORLD OF MATTER AND THE WORLD 
of Man. By Theodore Parker. Selected from Notes of his un- 
published Sermons, by Rufus Leighton, and Edited by Frances 
Power Cobbe. In one Vol. Crown 8vo, pp. 350, cloth. Portrait, 
price 7^. 6d. 



New and Important Work by the author of " The Life and Writings of 
Theodore Parker." 

THEOLOGICAL HANDBOOK. 

8vo, neatly bound in cloth, price 7s. 

A MANUAL OF RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION, Translated from the 
French of Dr A. Reville. 
CONTENTS. 

PART FIRST.— RELIGIOUS HISTORY. 

Chap. 1. Origin and Diversity of Religions — 2. Polytheistic Religions — 
3. Shemitic Monotheism — 4. Mosaism — 5. Judaism — 6. The Evan- 
gelical History— 7. The Apostolic Church — 8. The Christian Church 
under the Roman Empire — a. Struggle of Christianity with Poly- 
theism— The Ancient Catholic Church— 9. The Church of the 
Middle Ages — a. The Propagation of Christianity — Islamism — b. Ro- 
man Catholicism — 10. The Reformation and Modern Times. 

PART SECOND. — TEACHINGS OF JESUS. 

Group 1.— The New Law— 2. The Propagation of the Kingdom— 3. The 
Unbelieving Generation — 4. The Parables of the Kingdom — 5. Great 
and Small, Worthy and Unworthy— 6. Denunciation of Hypocrisy— 
7. Last Warnings. 

PART THIRD. — RELIGIOUS DOCTRINE. 

Introduction.— Chap. 1. God— 2. Man— 3. Sin— 4. Christianity— 

5. The Christ— a. The Person of Christ— 6. The Work of Christ— 

6. The Holy Spirit— a. Inspiration— b. The Church— 7. The Chris- 
tian Life— 8. The Life Eternal. 



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